Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
(2 days, 16 hours ago)
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“Independent Guardians(1) The Modern Slavery Act 2015 is amended as follows.(2) For section 48 substitute—“Independent guardians(1) The Secretary of State must make arrangements to enable persons (“independent guardians”) to be available to represent and support children to whom this section applies.(2) This section applies to a child if—(a) a reference relating to that child has been, or is about to be, made to a competent authority for a determination for the purposes of Article 10 of the Trafficking Convention as to whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that the child is a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, and(b) there has not been a conclusive determination that the child is not such a victim; and for the purposes of this subsection a determination which has been challenged by way of proceedings for judicial review shall not be treated as conclusive until those proceedings are finally determined.(3) This section also applies to a child who appears to the Secretary of State to be a separated child.”(3) After section 48 insert—“48A Independent Guardians: functions(1) This section defines the functions and duties of person appointed as an independent guardian under section 48.(2) The functions of an independent guardian are to—(a) ascertain and communicate the views of the child in relation to matters affecting the child;(b) consult regularly with the child and keeping the child informed of legal and other proceedings affecting the child and any other matters affecting the child;(c) contribute to a plan to safeguard and promote the future welfare of the child based on an individual assessment of that child’s best interests in line with leaving care services. (3) In the discharge of their functions, the independent guardian must at all times act in the best interests of the child.(4) The advocate will assist the child to obtain legal or other advice, assistance and representation, including by appointing and instructing legal representatives to act on the child's behalf.(5) For the purposes of this Act—“separated child” means a child who—(a) is not ordinarily resident in England and Wales, and(b) is separated from all persons who—(i) have parental responsibility for the child, or(ii) before the child’s arrival in England and Wales, were responsible for the child whether by law or custom.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to incorporate the entitlement to independent guardians for separated and trafficked children and set out their functions.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am moving Amendment 166 with the support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, to whom I am grateful—she regrets that she cannot be in her place—as I am to the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, the RMCC, for its help.
The amendment would introduce an entitlement to an independent guardian for separated asylum-seeking or trafficked children, in line with international law and the provisions already made in Scotland, building on and expanding the existing independent child trafficking guardian service run by Barnardo’s.
Imagine that you are a child who has fled persecution or conflict, travelling across Europe and then making the perilous journey across the channel, all of which makes for a pretty traumatic experience. You arrive frightened, wet and cold. You are given no time to recover but, instead, almost immediately are faced with questions that you may not understand and age-assessment procedures that can all too easily wrongly determine that you are an adult. I will not go into that today, other than to say that research shows how these age assessments can undermine children’s mental health and well-being. You then face incomprehensible bureaucratic procedures and have to navigate complex systems, such as social care, immigration and criminal justice, as you make the difficult legal journey involved in claiming asylum.
How different might it be if you had a legal guardian to support you? The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out that legal guardians are a crucial component of a protection system for children who temporarily or permanently lack a family environment and are unable to have their interests represented by their parents. An independent legal guardian in this context plays a key role in supporting unaccompanied children by connecting them to all the support they need, instructing solicitors on their behalf and, most importantly, representing their best interests throughout.
An evaluation of the Scottish guardianship service, now called Guardianship Scotland, showed that it played an invaluable beneficial role in supporting unaccompanied children. In particular, it helped them with navigation and orientation, gathered and provided information for stakeholders, supported interactions with immigration lawyers, and provided emotional support.
The RMCC applauds the crucial role played by the service, which, it says,
“highlights the transformative power of dedicated advocacy and care”.
Barnardo’s points to the evidence of the positive impact on mental health during often lengthy asylum waits, with qualitative feedback emphasising that guardians are viewed by asylum-seeking children as their primary source of stability, advocacy and protection. It told me that seven independent evaluations of the trafficking guardian service that it runs found that having a guardian helps reduce children’s likelihood of going missing and their vulnerability to harm.
The effects on children have been both immediate and long-term. Barnardo’s quotes asylum-seeking children supported by its service in Northern Ireland:
“I trust you and rely on your support”,
and
“my friend does not have an independent guardian working with him and this is so bad. I would have really struggled with that”.
Yet the limited reach of the traffic and guardianship service in England and Wales, and the lack of any such service for asylum-seeking children here, means that thousands of vulnerable children are having to struggle every day as they try to build a new life.
Compelling evidence of this comes from a new study of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people by the LSE and the University of Bedfordshire, as I referred to in our previous sitting. It focuses in particular on their well-being. The children and young people themselves identified a number of aspects of their lives that were important to their well-being, including
“not being lonely and having reliable people to talk to”
and
“professional support and knowing professionals are taking responsibility for you and your needs”,
along with
“having hope for the future”.
Moreover, they viewed integration as key to their well-being.
Happily, a significant number of the children and young people were being supported by a charity operating an independent guardian-like service. For them, that was often the difference that made the difference, but, the report said, these specialist casework interventions happen mostly by chance and after procedural drift and poor mistakes in and around the asylum decision-making process, rather than systematically or at the early stages of children and young people’s asylum applications.
The report talks of a “protection gap”, in which the children and young people felt very much alone. Their sense of well-being was closely associated with the extent to which they felt cared for by professionals—to have what the authors call a “scaffolding of care” built around them to help give them hope and belief in themselves and their future—and hope for the future was crucial to their well-being.
The importance of caring support from a social worker cannot be stressed enough but not all enjoy such a relationship, and social workers do not necessarily have the requisite understanding of the asylum system. This led to the recommendation by the children and young people themselves, echoed by the academic researchers, for
“independent guardians from the start and throughout their journey, who understand the asylum, immigration, modern slavery and social care processes, who understand the unique challenges”
and who are accessible.
As that study illustrates, the case for extending the guardianship service lies primarily in the positive impact that it will have on a particularly vulnerable group of children, in line with international standards. It is also a very cost-effective measure. UNICEF UK and the Children’s Society calculated some years ago that a system of guardianship for all unaccompanied children could save £1.25 for every £1 spent over three years, rising to £2.39, taking account of the benefits once the children become adults. That detailed cost-benefit analysis estimates an overall saving of over £62 million arising from reduction in social work time, police resources, interpreting time, judicial and legal expenses, and the time of other professionals.
Ultimately, what is at stake here is the mental and physical well-being of children. That is what the Bill is all about. As one of the young people in the study I cited commented:
“Children are not just a category. You need to be living all your childhood”—
a maxim that we might apply to the Bill as a whole.
The RMCC concludes:
“In light of the substantial financial savings, improved systemic efficiency, and enhanced well-being of unaccompanied children, implementing a nationwide guardianship service in the UK is both a fiscally responsible and morally imperative decision”.
In her recent oral evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, the Minister, Angela Eagle, suggested that the Home Office
“may start to look at how we can provide a voice for migrants—an advocacy service, a help service”.
I do not know what she had in mind, but I suggest that a guardianship service for unaccompanied children would be a good place to start.
I am not looking for such a decision today, but I believe the case is compelling from the perspective of children’s well-being. I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to commit to talking to her Home Office colleagues and, together with them, to give the proposal serious consideration, with a view to possible implementation in the future. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. I declare that I am vice-chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation and co-chair of the all-party group against modern slavery. Ten years ago, the Modern Slavery Act introduced child advocates who are informally called guardians. It is a brilliant scheme, but I understand that it is still in a pilot stage, which is one of the sadnesses of the implementation of parts of the Modern Slavery Act.
Lord Storey (LD)
I entirely agree with what has been said. You cannot imagine how it must be for a child or young person to suddenly arrive here on their own and not have any knowledge of how they progress or what to do.
Liverpool used to be a centre for children who were just sent to the UK, although I think there were a number of places. I remember vividly a boy who arrived in Liverpool at the age of seven. The local authority, which happened to be Knowsley, immediately found foster parents for him. His life was completely changed; he came to my school not speaking a word of English, but when he did his key stage 2 SATs in maths, he got fantastic results. The sad thing was, of course, that at the age of 18 he had to be sent back home.
I do not understand the difference between a local authority dealing with this problem and organising foster parents and providing a guardian. There must be something so that young people who arrive in this country through no fault of their own are supported.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 166 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, would amend the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and, as I understand it, would complement the role of the independent child trafficking advocate in these cases with the right to an independent guardian. It would also expand their remit to include children who are separated from those with parental responsibility or the equivalent in their home country.
As the noble Baroness knows, probably better than anyone else in the Committee, there is existing statutory guidance for unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery dating from 2017. It is clear that, in common with all looked-after children, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are entitled to independent advocacy support. The guidance stresses that this might particularly be the case for this group of children.
The Refugee Council has a very helpful flow chart on its website showing the asylum process and clearly highlighting the role of independent advice at two stages in the application process. As we heard from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the independent child trafficking advocates have only partially been implemented. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about full implementation.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for sharing the recent research from the LSE and the University of Bedfordshire with me. As she described very emotively, this paints a picture of real inconsistency in the response that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children receive. It makes a number of recommendations, including this one. However, as the noble Baroness knows, implementing independent legal guardians would require significant investment in training, establishing oversight and case management systems—although I acknowledge her cost-benefit point. I presume that there would also need to be some form of proper accountability and oversight of these guardians.
There is a case for making the existing law work as it was intended before amending it and introducing an alternative. I absolutely respect the noble Baroness’s deep and long-standing concern and work in relation to the welfare and rights of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, but there are profound questions to be asked about her amendment. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 166 was tabled by my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and compliment her, as always, on the eloquent and moving way she described the plight of so many children and young people coming into this country. I know that she is a very passionate advocate in her own right and speaks to many people across the piece.
Specifically on the amendment, although other issues have been brought into the discussions today, it seeks to provide support, via independent child guardians, to all separated children. That would be in addition to trafficked and exploited children. It would also initiate the support on consideration of a referral, rather than when an initial decision has been made that a child has been potentially exploited. This amendment also sets out limited functions for the independent guardians but, crucially, it removes the ability to amend these functions through regulations or statutory guidance.
Currently, the existing independent child trafficking guardianship service is a specialist provision for trafficked and exploited children, operating in two-thirds of local authorities across England and Wales. We are moving forward towards a national contract, planned for tender in the summer of 2025, building on the work from the Modern Slavery Act and from the very first authorities that were brought into scope in 2017. As we have heard, this is currently funded by the Home Office but delivered by Barnardo’s. It is important to note that we will look at best practice all the way through the piece as we move forward. Modern slavery engagement forums are absolutely critical in this, and I will go on to speak about the Minister’s role as well.
As my noble friend Lady Lister is aware, the needs of trafficked and exploited children are complex, ever evolving and ever changing. Defining functions directly in the Bill would reduce the flexibility for the Secretary of State to adapt the role through the statutory guidance or regulations as it needs to evolve. We would not wish to limit the functions of guardians in this way and would instead continue to provide the detail for their role in statutory guidance or regulations. We believe that this is the best way we can move on and acknowledge changes in circumstances as we move forward.
I recognise my noble friend’s intentions in extending the independent guardian provision to all separated children, and I acknowledge the words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in this space as well. This would significantly expand the scope and, unfortunately therefore, strain resources, which could delay support for exploited or trafficked children who need urgent help. Separated children will not necessarily be trafficked, and there is a risk that this provision will overlap with the existing support, causing confusion or duplication in some places, as well as providing unsuitable services for some separated children.
The arrangement for unaccompanied asylum seeker children is, as we know, that they are looked after by local authorities in keeping with the arrangements for all children in the United Kingdom. Unaccompanied asylum seeker children are provided with a professional social worker and will also have an independent reviewing officer to oversee their care arrangements. They are also entitled to legal assistance in pursuing their asylum claim. These arrangements ensure that children are provided with independent support and advice; the addition of a guardian to this framework, as I have said before, could risk adding another level of complexity to existing arrangements. Instead, we have worked to provide additional support specifically to vulnerable children who may have been trafficked. We therefore do not consider that expanding or bringing forward the point at which support is initiated would be in the best interests of meeting the needs of exploited and trafficked children.
That is not to say that we do not recognise the work that needs to continue. I am pleased to say that Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, has regular meetings with the ICTG service. She holds round tables, bringing everyone together to make sure that we can bring the role of advocates into this mix and continue the essential conversations.
I completely recognise the need for stable relationships, as outlined by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We can only imagine the disruption, upheaval and separation, and the impact that that has on these very vulnerable young people. The importance of this is that the child will have access to an advocate. Unlike the social worker and IRO, the advocate is not required to have a prescribed social work qualification; their primary purpose is to represent fully the views and wishes of the child. As part of this function, they can assist the child in obtaining legal advice in the same way as the social worker and IRO—and, indeed, the foster carer, where that is appropriate.
I understand the need to continue the conversations. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that those conversations will continue. I completely acknowledge that there is no room for complacency at all in this very important area of work. With those reassurances, I hope that my noble friend will feel content to withdraw this amendment.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I entirely understand and respect the Minister’s reservations, particularly on not putting regulations in primary legislation that might make more difficulty—that I understand. It is the spirit of the amendment that I am particularly concerned with. I just ask, is it intended that the modern slavery advocate will be put out across the entire country before the end of this year?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The tender is going out in the summer. I believe that implementation will take some time and should be fully up and running by 2027.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for her support. She put her finger on the key point, which is that it is the spirit and not the details of the amendment that I hoped that the Government would consider. She made some important points, in particular that social workers change all the time, guardians are there all the time, and that there is a real danger that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children could be exploited if they are not properly supported. The distinction that is being made between asylum-seeking and exploited children is not such a clear one as has been suggested.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and my noble friend the Minister for their kind words, but I go back to the point that the spirit of the amendment is that we need to think about this. I am glad that my noble friend said that conversations will continue, but will they continue with the Home Office? I originally decided to push this issue when I was confronted by a group of young people who clearly just did not know what was going on, they had not understood anything, they had faced difficulties as young asylum seekers, and it just seemed to me that they needed support throughout. I had read about the Scottish system, so my question is, if Scotland can do it, why can we not? I leave that thought with my noble friend the Minister. I ask that there be discussions with the Home Office, because it is a really important issue, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
“Action to promote the wellbeing of children in relation to social media(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must, for the purposes of promoting the wellbeing of children—(a) direct the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom (“the UK CMOs”) to prepare and publish advice for parents and carers on the use of social media by children at different ages and developmental stages, and(b) by regulations made my statutory instrument require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly-effective age assurance measures to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users. (2) Any advice published under subsection (1)(a) must have regard to—(a) the paper published on 7 February 2019 entitled “United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ commentary on 'Screen-based activities and children and young people’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing: a systematic map of reviews'”, and(b) any scientific or other developments since the publication of that paper which appear to the UK CMOs to be relevant.(3) Any regulations under subsection (1)(b) must be treated as an enforceable requirement within the meaning of section 131 (and for the purposes of Part 7) of the Online Safety Act 2023.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1)(b) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(5) For the purposes of this section—“the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom” means the Chief Medical Officers for—(a) England,(b) Wales,(c) Scotland, and(d) Northern Ireland;“regulated user-to-user services” is as defined in the Online Safety Act 2023.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take action to promote children’s wellbeing in relation to their use of social media by commissioning advice from the Chief Medical Officers and introducing regulations to prevent under 16s from accessing social media.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, my Amendment 177 seeks to ban access to social media before the age of 16. Other amendments in this group relate to screens in schools, edtech, and the use and possession of smartphones in schools. I refer to my interests in the register, particularly the fact that I am co-founder and chair of a multi-academy trust and an investor in a number of technology companies.
We are now seeing an overwhelming body of clinical evidence about the dangers of social media for children and young people, and a rapidly increasing awareness about this among parents, teachers, and children and young people themselves. The title of this Bill is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and, in my view, nothing could enhance the well-being of our 9 million schoolchildren and young people more than to accept this amendment. Nothing could have a wider impact.
The dictionary definition of well-being is the state of being comfortable, happy or healthy. Sadly, millions of children are in none of these states. Indeed, it would be better to scrap the whole of the rest of the Bill and enact only this one amendment than to enact the Bill without it—although I am not proposing that.
According to Health Professionals for Safer Screens, social media causes developmental issues such as language and communication difficulties, emotional and social difficulties and reduced academic attainment, and has an impact on ADHD. It says it causes physical impacts, such as changes to the brain, poor eyesight, eating disorders, obesity and sleep difficulties. There is evidence that autistic children are particularly vulnerable to the impact of screen time.
A recent UCL study corroborated the link between social media and eating disorders, and 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. Almost three-quarters of teenage girls think that social media creates more pressure for people to look a certain way. If I can attempt to paraphrase such a leading expert as Andy Clark, professor of cognitive philosophy at the University of Sussex, overreliance on technology negatively impacts our ability to think, predict and be creative.
The impact of social media on reading is something we are seeing ever more articles on. A study published in Acta Paediatrica concluded that brain connectivity in children is increased by the time they spend reading books and decreased by the length of exposure to screen-based media. According to Teacher Tapp, 56% of teachers would prefer a world without social media and, of course, teachers are particularly aware of the impact of cyberbullying.
According to Mumsnet, half of parents say their children’s use of social media negatively affects their self-esteem, rising to 57% for girls, and 83% of parents back a social media ban for those under 16. Some 60% told Mumsnet that they would be more likely to vote for a party that implemented such a ban. It also makes the point that this is a cohort problem—that is, it is too big for any one family to solve. Millions of families across the country experience a daily battle with their children because of the addictive nature of smartphones and social media. Is this what we want for our families? I do not think so.
A recent American Harris Poll found that most parents wished their children grew up in a world with no social media—the same level of regret as for guns. According to HMD, 64% of parents say smartphone use negatively impacts their child’s sleep, and 61% say that it reduces the amount of physical activity they undertake. More than half are worried that it will reduce the amount of time they spend socialising with friends, and 75% of parents fear smartphones expose their children to internet dangers, with more than half admitting that they just do not know what their children get up to when using their phones. Almost half of parents believe mobile phone use has changed their child’s personality.
According to Deloitte, over half of Gen Z would favour a ban on social media for under-16s, rising to 71% for millennials and 78% for boomers. According to an American survey by Common Sense Media in 2023, the average American 11 to17 year-old receives 237 social media notifications a day.
According to Parentkind, 67% of 16 to 18 year-olds themselves think smartphones are harmful, and according to a Millenium Cohort Study, 50% of teenagers say they are addicted to social media. New research by the British Standards Institution shows that almost half of young people aged 16 to 21 would prefer to be young in a world without the internet.
Adolescence is a period of life in which our sense of self undergoes a profound transition, as teenagers become more conscious of how others perceive them; they often experience increased self-consciousness and self-criticism. Social media and the algorithms attached to it serve only to amplify this. We also know that the adolescent’s brain is particularly susceptible to addictive behaviour. Constant exposure to fast-paced, highly stimulating content can only condition the brain to expect frequent, rapid rewards, making it harder to sustain focus and concentrate.
So, why 16? As I have said, adolescence is a significantly important period of development, and we know that girls and boys may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of social media at different times during their adolescence. Indeed, research shows that girls experience a negative link between social media use and life satisfaction when they are 11 to 13 years old and boys when they are 14 to 15 years old, suggesting sensitivity to social media use might be linked to developmental changes, possibly to changes in the structure of the brain, or to puberty, which occurs later in boys than in girls.
The 13 to 16 age group is the least risk-averse and is easily influenced and highly susceptible to issues such as grooming, cyberbullying, body dysmorphia and social comparison, violent content, misogyny and knife crime, not to mention dopamine addiction. Thousands of influencers push on social media vaping, antidepressants, therapy, cosmetic injectables and mental health misinformation daily on to our teenagers.
A study by Northwestern University found that children aged between seven and 18 on average use six different skincare products a day, and some more than a dozen—all of which is to say that age restrictions which seek to stop children accessing harmful content on social media from an earlier age than 16 are unlikely to be effective in stemming harm.
We want our children to be brought up confident, able to engage in deep thought, be reflective, able to concentrate, able to exercise judgment and see the other side’s point of view, be compassionate and so on. We also want them to get a good night’s sleep. Smartphones and social media set up exactly the opposite behaviours.
Research by the Children’s Commissioner shows that the experience children have online is entirely different from that of adults, and that they are affected by content in different ways. Content that adults may not find harmful can be extremely damaging to children and adolescents. The former Children’s Commissioner, the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, who I am delighted to see is in her place, has stated that:
“Too many children are spending their most precious years sedentary, doomscrolling on their phones and often alone, while their health and wellbeing deteriorates”.
We know that the police are very concerned about the use of social media in the radicalisation of children and young people and in their recruitment into gangs. The Education Select Committee has concluded that:
“The overwhelming weight of evidence submitted to us suggests that the harms of screen time and social media significantly outweigh the benefits for young children”.
It is time to deal with this issue, and I am encouraged that the Government are at least thinking about it. However, the concept of two hours per app—two hours on each of WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok and so on—is really playing at the issue. France is planning a ban, one is being implemented in Australia, New Zealand is bringing forward legislation on one and Greece, Spain, Denmark and Ireland are considering one. We take children’s safety seriously in areas such as smoking and alcohol; now is the time to step up to the plate on social media.
It is particularly noticeable that all the leaders of the main teaching unions have pointed out, in stark terms, the dangers of smartphones and social media, with the general secretary of NASUWT describing smartphones as “lethal weapons”. This support from the unions is commendable. As the Labour Government are so close with the unions, I very much hope that they will follow their advice. Why should our hard-pressed teachers have to deal with the consequences of this free-for-all?
I have cited much research and many statistics, but I will conclude by asking noble Lords to remember five points. First, smartphones and social media are damaging the development of our children’s brains. Secondly, they are highly addictive. Thirdly, they expose them to serious risk of sometimes life-threatening dangers. Fourthly, cyberbullying is rife. Finally, they are having a serious effect on our children’s self-esteem, mental health and well-being, which is what we are here to debate. The formative nature of teenage brains is totally ill equipped to win the battle against the algorithms embedded in social media by companies with billions at their disposal. They need our help—and they, their parents and their teachers are crying out for it. It is time that we came to their aid.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 183CA and 183CB in this group. Before I do so, I will add my support to Amendment 177, from my noble friends Lord Nash and Lady Barran, and Amendment 458.
It is odd that, while we are legislating in this Bill for the provision of breakfast clubs, of which I have previously said I am a fan, legislating for the use of social media by teenagers and the use of mobile phones in school seems to be a step too far for a Bill that is focused on children’s well-being. That is despite the wealth of evidence, to which my noble friend just alluded, about how disruptive phones can be to children’s well-being and learning.
It is not good enough to say that 90% of secondary schools report having a policy in place to ban the use of phones in the school day—which, by the way, means that one in 10 allows access to phones in the school day. What matters is how effective those policies are, and the evidence shows that, in too many cases, they are not effective enough. Around 80% of secondary schools surveyed by the Children’s Commissioner allow children to keep their phones on them in the school day, with the expectation that it is not seen or heard. However, the evidence shows that that is not working. The National Behaviour Survey in 2022-23 found that 36% of secondary school teachers reported phones being used without permission in at least some of their lessons in the past week, while 59% of pupils reported the same.
When the previous Government introduced guidance on mobile phones in schools, they said that they would keep the approach under review and move to introduce statutory guidance if the situation had not improved. A key milestone for assessing that was the publication of this year’s National Behaviour Survey. When I asked the Minister in January when she expected it to be published, she said that it would be in the spring. I may have missed it—I do not think that I have—but could she update the Committee on when we can expect the results of the latest behaviour survey?
My amendments, in a sense, follow on from my noble friends’ Amendment 177, which I support, but they specifically focus on the advice and guidance for parents, teachers and carers of preschool-age children. To be clear, unlike many who have participated in this Bill so far, I am no expert in this area; I am working hard to ensure that I am across, and understand as best I can, the evidence in this area. However, to some extent, that is the point of my amendments: if you are a parent, childcare professional or teacher of preschool children, there is no clear summary of the available evidence and no clear advice on the best approach to children’s use of screens and technology in their early years, yet such screens and technology are ubiquitous.
A good starting point for both amendments would be the Chief Medical Officer’s advice provided for in Amendment 177, which crucially specifies that it should differentiate by age. I could not find any public guidance from the Government or Ofcom that really reflects that. In fact, much of the guidance that is available is inappropriate for very young children and may give parents a misleading understanding of how they can best navigate this tricky area for preschoolers.
In my experience—I declare my interest as a mum of two preschool children—there is nothing mentioned by your GP, by your health visitor or at children’s centres: so many of those important touch points in the early years of a family. The same absence of advice or guidance extends to early years childcare and education settings too. I could find no reference in the early years standards framework to the appropriate and safe use of screens in early years settings, and that surprised me. My amendments simply seek to fill these gaps to provide proper guidance to parents and early years settings. So I would be keen to hear from the Minister about what work the Government are doing in these areas.
Within the Government’s opportunity mission, they have set themselves a milestone of
“75% of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment by 2028”—
an increase from 67.7% currently. With screens so ubiquitous in children’s and parents’ lives, and excessive screen use shown to impact on so many of the early learning goals, including communication and language, physical development and social and emotional development, this must be an essential part of the Government’s plans here.
Research shows that significant proportions of younger children have access to smart devices, including phones, and spend significant time online. Ofcom’s Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2025 shows alarming trends, not just on the scale of use but on the pace of change. One in five three to five year-olds have their own mobile phone, extending to 85% of their age group using any device to go online. More than half use messaging sites or apps and half use livestreaming. The proportion of parents of three to five year-olds who say that their child uses social media apps or sites has significantly increased in recent years, from around a quarter in 2021 and 2022, rising to three in 10 in 2023, and almost four in 10 this year. Over a third of parents of three to five year-olds whose child uses social media use it on their children’s behalf, and over four in 10 say that they use sites and apps together with their child. However, two in 10 of these parents indicate that their child uses these apps independently.
Many of the debates we have had about keeping children safe online focus on teenagers, which is not surprising given that the legal age for accessing social media is 13—it is older for some apps currently—and many of the observed harms are particularly acute in teenage years, as we have heard. But what constitutes appropriate use of devices and an appropriate amount of screen time will vary wildly for a two year-old compared to a 12 year-old, and we must reflect this.
So, more specifically, can the Minister say whether my understanding is correct that there is currently no guidance for preschool settings in the early years standards framework on the safe and appropriate use of screens, and if that is the case, do the Government have any plans to introduce such guidance? Can she also say what plans there are not just to produce guidance based on the best available evidence specifically for parents of preschool children, but on how they plan to disseminate this? For example, are there any plans to integrate guidance into the Start for Life campaign, or to provide tips and information for new parents through the health visiting programme?
I end by emphasising that this is not about judging parents or telling them what to do. I use screens and my kids use screens—both of us, sometimes or often, too much. It is not about moral panic either. It is about recognising that the ubiquity and nature of screens in our lives has changed. If we equip parents, caregivers and teachers with clearer information and tools, we can help them navigate this ever-changing environment with more confidence and support. It is important that the Government recognise this, particularly for early years development. I look forward to hearing their plans in this area.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, as this is my first substantive contribution in Committee, I declare my education interests as chair of E-ACT multi-academy trust, of STEM Learning, of Century-Tech and of COBIS. I also own half of Suklaa Ltd, which has a number of education clients.
Amendment 458A in my name is an amendment to Amendment 458 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I am seeking to add an exemption for educational purposes to the exemptions from the policy of smartphone bans in schools proposed by her amendment. I have read Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation, Christine Rosen’s Extinction of Experience and Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop’s excellent Disengaged Teen. I know that our children are losing out on the vital developmental impact of unstructured outdoor play, thanks to the distractions of technology.
We are all losing the multisensory benefits of engaging with real-life experiences because we are too busy on our phones, including in this Chamber, and we are losing empathy as a result. The overconsumption of violent online content is increasing the bystander effect that distinguishes us as communities of people.
Our children are increasingly disengaged from learning, partly due to boring content at school and partly due to diminishing attention spans, thanks to too much time scrolling short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram. I am only too aware that social media is addictive by design and is the main culprit in this complex set of problems. Multiple systemic reviews and surveys confirm that excessive smartphone use is associated with poor sleep quality, increased depression and anxiety and lower life satisfaction among teens, something that this country has a particular problem with and that cannot be solely blamed on phones and social media.
This month, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a large study tracking more than 4,000 adolescents and finding that the smartphone risk to youth mental health is primarily linked to the addictive use of smartphones, social media or video games. Those who reported compulsive use were two or three times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts or self-harm by the age of 14, compared with their peers. The study found that it was the addictive behaviour that was the strong predictor, not the amount of screen time per se.
I therefore have some sympathy with Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I compliment him on the way he introduced his amendment—echoing, almost word for word at times, the speech he made on the very first group of amendments in this Committee. However, I am unpersuaded that Chief Medical Officers are the right people to lead on this. I am concerned that Ofcom may not be as rigorous as I had understood when we passed the Online Safety Act in enforcing the terms and conditions of platforms relating to their minimum age limits. It may well be that this House should look to another opportunity in the next Session to toughen Ofcom’s responsibilities and duties in this regard, once we have seen a little more of the impact of the Act as Ofcom is implementing it. Amendment 183CA from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, seems quite sensible, and I think Amendment 183CB should be pursued by the DfE, but in close partnership with Ofcom as the regulator.
Amendment 458 clearly has merit. Most schools have adopted such policies to ban or control smartphones following the previous Government’s guidance. At E-ACT we are now piloting the use of signal-blocking pouches that pupils are required to store their phones in during the school day. The early findings are that this has had a really positive impact on the schools concerned in terms of learning and behaviour. I am told by a friend who is a parent of children at Westminster School, over the road, that it is using geofencing technology so that when pupils enter the location, phones’ functionality is changed to turn off social media but to retain their use for emergency broadcasting, due to the security risk related to their proximity to Parliament.
In all these schools, children are benefiting from having a rest from their phones. Teachers benefit from the lessening of distraction and the absence of a back channel of conversation going on through lessons. In some other schools that have done this, there is even a reduction in playground fights because pupils are no longer able to film and share them online.
However, I am also working hard on issues related to media literacy, in part as a member of your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee. The issues relating to social media addiction are now being amplified by the ease of creating highly credible false content using generative AI. The algorithms will not only continue to be addictive but feed content that is misleading, upsetting and disturbing, as any of us can now create images, audio and video, at will, of anything that we can imagine. This needs a more sophisticated response than simply a ban. This needs education, in schools and for adult parents and grandparents. It was clear from the committee’s witnesses that just relying on a knowledge-rich teaching of media literacy will not work. If we just tell young people what is dangerous and harmful, what to look out for, we will fail. Children do not want this to be yet another thing that we tell them off about.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight. He makes a very compelling case for better media literacy. He and other noble Lords will recall that we did push very hard for that during the Online Safety Act’s rather lengthy passage, but without as much success as we would have hoped. Every week that we wait before we implement more effective media literacy is a week lost, and probably part of a generation lost as well.
I was very happy to put my name to Amendments 183CA and 183CB in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn. As noble Lords have heard, this is a very live subject. Countries and societies all over the world are wrestling with the effects of the technology that is all-pervading—to a greater extent than most of us would wish. When the noble Lord was talking about geolocation at Westminster School, I thought for a fleeting moment, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had geolocation in the Palace of Westminster?”. Once one entered here, one could no longer have access to news websites telling us things that are distracting and probably not very helpful for what we are trying to do. I exclude important things such as messages from your club about the lunchtime and the availability of the wine list.
The Online Safety Act took a very long time to happen. As we have learned since its enactment, making it flesh and making its intent have teeth is a very lengthy and protracted process—far longer than we had hoped and envisaged. We may still be two or three years away from knowing whether some of the key protections for children are working.
We do not have the luxury of being able to take this slowly. We need speed and we need clarity. When the noble Lord was talking about the distractions of the screen for young children, I thought of how often I, like others, pass parents or carers in the street pushing a pram; the child may well be in distress or asking for something, but whoever is pushing the pram is so deeply into their telephone or so deeply engaged in a conversation with their earphones in that they cannot even hear the child. They cannot even see it, if it is facing forward. That, in some ways, is a very good summary of the dilemma we have got ourselves into.
The Education Select Committee of another place produced a sensible report, just over a year ago in May 2024, called—perhaps the name of the Bill is a tribute to the name of the report—Screen Time: Impacts on Education and Wellbeing. As it happens, almost exactly a month ago, His Majesty’s Government—and, I assume, the Department for Education—issued their response. It is quite lengthy and fairly comprehensive. I would be surprised if, when the Minister responds to this group, she does not talk about many elements of the department’s response to the Select Committee’s report.
The import of the Government’s detailed response and its underlying theme is that this is very complicated and there are lots of different moving parts: “We are still not really on top of it. We are engaged and listening, but not ready to do anything yet”. One message that we all sense is that we do not have time on our side. Society, parents, teachers, those who look after young people, educators and the companies responsible for education technology want clarity and a sense of direction. They want to know that the Government are engaged—we will never be on top of this—looking at this carefully, and willing and able to act, quite quickly if required.
Equally, and importantly, if the Government act but the consequences are not quite as intended, they should have the courage to say, “We did not get that right. We need to change it and tweak it in the light of new evidence”. This is such a dynamic situation that we need a dynamic approach to deal with it.
Lastly, I think we need to look carefully at the psychology of this. For nearly 40 years, I have been involved with a charity that is now part of Coram, of which I am a governor, called Coram Life Education. It is the largest provider of health education in primary schools in the United Kingdom; we teach about half a million children a year. The essence of the way we teach is completely contradictory to schools’ normal pedagogic approaches: we do not tell the children what to do; we listen. We give the children information without saying whether it is good or bad; then we ask the children to give their views on the information they been given and what conclusions they have come to—whether it is good or less good for them. In this way, the children feel they have some control over what they are asked to do.
The least effective thing would be going for any sort of blanket ban. Children, as we all know, are probably far better versed in technology than we are. The more we try to ban it, the more clever ways will be found to get around it. It simply would not work. The way to get this to work is to get the children involved and engaged, because they will come to their own conclusions. They are not stupid. The more intelligent ones know exactly what social media and these addictive applications are doing to them. We should listen and learn from them the ways to respond to this, rather than thinking that we know best. We have allowed this situation to develop in plain sight over the last 15 to 20 years, and we have been very ineffective in dealing with it. Perhaps listening to the generations who are most directly involved and on whom this is having the greatest effect would be a smart way to look at it.
Finally, my noble friends Lady Kidron and Lady Cass are unable to be with us today but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, will know, they have convened a very impressive group of genuine experts in this field. There is a growing, deeply worrying and compelling body of evidence that the effects of screen time on children before the age of six will have a lifelong impact on their cognitive skills, behaviour—everything about them. The longer we take to acknowledge what is going on and to do something about it, the more we will regret it.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment so eloquently and persuasively described by my noble friends Lord Nash and Lady Penn. I was also extremely struck by the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on the need for education. It is about education, which is one of the safeguards on which we can rely. I was also struck by the points made by noble Lord, Lord Russell, which in some ways echoed but added to those made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight.
In April this year, the Times published the wide-ranging and comprehensive findings of its crime and justice commission. Its conclusions on the effects of social media on children aged under 16 were damning. They ranged from radicalisation, criminalisation and antisocial attitudes, right through to mental health problems and extremist views. The commission recommended that children under 16 be banned from accessing social media. It added that two-thirds of the population support that view, and that a higher number of the 16 to 24 year-old group do so. That is significant, because that is the group that has experienced the pressures.
As was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, Australia has recently imposed such a ban, and many other countries are preparing to do so. A total ban is self-evidently beyond the scope of the Bill, but a ban on the use of smartphones in schools is within its scope, given its focus on the safeguarding of children.
The vast majority of our schools will have policies in place to deal with the use of smartphones. There can be problems in implementing them, not least because the technology is constantly evolving and policies have to adapt to keep up. Some parents have understandable anxieties, feeling the need to be in contact with their children at all times, and they might well oppose a complete ban. There are also anxieties about age limits and other issues. The fact is that the decision is left to the school, and as a result there is a huge range of policies across the school spectrum.
Many will maintain that the decision should be left to the school, in accordance with its circumstances. I have sympathy with that view, but I have a couple of points to make; indeed, I have a question for the Minister when she winds up. I hope she can tell us the view of heads of schools on an overall ban, perhaps by year group, on smartphones in school. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, might also be able to help us with this. My guess is that the majority of school heads and teachers would welcome at least knowing where they stood on this issue and having one less thing to justify or argue about to parents and colleagues. It would certainly be time-saving in developing the school’s own policy and they themselves having to police it, whatever it might be.
Restrictions on smartphone use, especially in the classroom, would cut out phone-related bullying in school, which frequently transfers to the playground and sometimes into the community. It would also reduce child-on-child abuse—an important safeguarding issue. Of course, this Bill is also about safeguarding. More positively, and I am sure former teachers in the Chamber will agree, schools that have introduced a reduction in access to social media through smartphones have reported better communication and participation skills in their pupils.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken in Committee, so I declare my interest as chair of and adviser to the Birmingham Education Partnership.
It is 25 years ago, when the Minister and I were in the Department for Education, that we were discussing the rollout of technology in early years. It just was not part of school life; it was not an implement that was used. The thing we were most worried about then, which underpinned every speech I made, was that it should be an innovation that became available to all and was not limited by social class, the family you are born into or how much money you had in your pocket. I never thought that, a quarter of a century later, the debate would be about the damage that that area of technology development has brought to schools, but we must remember that that does not take away from the vision, the hope and the aspiration we saw in this technology a quarter of a century ago.
However, we are clearly not in a place where we want to be. I cannot say anything to counter the evidence that the noble Lord, Lord Nash—indeed, everybody who has spoken—gave about the impact of social media on young minds. It is just terrible. As an adult, I feel responsibility that it has happened and that we moved too slowly to do anything about it. If some of us come to the conclusion that we do not want to ban smartphones in schools, it should not be a political dividing line; we are actually all on the same side. We have at least got to that point, but there is a genuine debate to be had about how we take it forward to protect our children so that they have the advantages that technology can bring while saving them from the risks and the bad things that it can do.
I think that there is a difference between smartphones and social media that has not been clear in this debate, and I am not sure about the definition of smartphones at the end of the proposed new clause. It says that a smartphone is something
“whose main purpose is not the support of learning or study”;
I do not know what that means. A smartphone enables learning and study and good things in life, and it allows social media to reach people that it should not be reaching. The definition is quite difficult to follow.
My main problem is that the smartphone is a bit like the atom bomb; you cannot uninvent it. It is entrenched in our society. There are things that as adults we cannot now do unless we have a smartphone, and every single week, month and year, government and everybody else push us as adults to use smartphones. That is what AI is about. All the advantages that are going to come through AI are connected to smartphones, so whether we like it or not, we have gone too far down the road. For adults, smartphones are here to stay. I do not see how abolishing them in schools allows teachers and educationists in wider civic society to train and help young people come to terms with the adult world in which they are going to live. If smartphones are banned in schools, if they cannot be used, how can we expect young people to be competent and confident adult users of smartphones and to cope with social media? It would be like saying, “We’re not going to teach you to swim, but by the time you get to an adult, we’re going to let you live by the side of a lake”. It is just nonsense. We have got to help children to come to terms with smartphones, and that is why I thought that the speech made by my noble friend Lord Knight was powerful.
I describe myself as being on a bit of a journey. I am a bit of a floating voter on smartphones in schools, but when I am honest with myself, I know that the reason that I nearly come down on the side of banning them in schools is that I am panicking that we are not doing anything else. I almost reach out for anything—at least we could ban them in schools; at least we could protect children between 9 am and 4 pm; at least we could protect them between five and 18. To be honest, that is not enough. If there is this problem, and we all seem to have signed up to the idea that it is a problem, it needs more from us as policymakers than to, yet again, say it is the responsibility of schools. Reducing teenage pregnancy was the responsibility of schools. Healthy eating was the responsibility of schools. Being better citizens was the responsibility of schools. Every time we have a problem that goes through society and we are not quite sure how to deal with it, we put it on the curriculum—it is the responsibility of schools.
I do not say that schools have not got a responsibility—they hold the major responsibility because they are going to be teaching media literacy—but they are not the only ones who have it. If we are serious, adults, parents, government and civic society need to get together with schools and educators to try to solve this problem. It is not sensible to say that all we can do in this Bill is go for schools. That would make a bad policy. When it does not work, we cannot say, “Yes, that’s all we could do in that Bill”. That would be poor policymaking. I hesitate to say that government has got to look at it in the round and do something more than it has, because that is just time, and we have known about this problem for 10 years at least and we have not moved fast enough. I end up probably coming down on the side of my noble friend Lord Knight and saying that there are things that need to be done in schools that mean we ought to keep smartphones in schools.
I have some specific questions on that. The proposed new clause in Amendment 458 would ban smartphones, except in two or three circumstances. My noble friend Lord Knight then puts down an amendment, which is great, excepting another circumstance. We know what is going to happen: people will be putting forward amendments as to why, in a particular case, smartphones should not be banned in schools, and eventually it will all be a muddle and we will have to start again. In truth, you cannot ban smartphones in schools. There will always be reasons why you will need to use them, so you end up coming down on the side of saying that we have got to use them well and we have got to support young people.
My last point is, how do you enforce it? It is in the law. If the governing body—that is the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to tell the truth—permits smartphones in schools, who enforces it? Do you get the police in? Do you get parents to report it? Do you get kids to report that they have been allowed to have a smartphone in school? At the moment, it is heads who choose, along with their governing body and staff and the wider school community, not to have smartphones in schools. They own that. It is their law. They have gone through the preparation, talked it through and arrived at a decision, and that makes sense. I may just not be seeing the rationale, but I worry that enforcement, when it is in primary legislation, will be not a great thing for schools. I am coming down on the side of not banning them, but my great worry is that it is just another couple of months passed where the real dangers that were outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and others have not been addressed in this House or elsewhere.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I think she spoke for many of us on the challenge of edtech: how our hopes that this would be a transformational technology have now changed emphatically, and how we now find ourselves in a place we really did not intend to be.
I would like to say a word about Amendment 183CA, from my noble friend Lady Penn, the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Cass. My noble friend Lady Shephard put it well: our children do need respite, and a school is a wonderful place to be spared that kind of respite. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, spoke well about the harsh impact on education.
However, it is Amendment 177 that I primarily want to address. For that reason, I see Amendment 183CA as a stepping stone to getting rid of mobile phones from the lives of under-16s altogether at some stage; that is what I will address my comments to. I do this as a former Health Minister and I declare my interest as a trustee of the Royal Society for Public Health.
The neurobiological evidence of the harms of social media on children is not ambiguous any more. It is irrefutable, as it is, for instance, for tobacco. We can see the causes and the correlations. One three-year longitudinal study published two years ago found that adolescents who habitually checked social media showed “distinct neurodevelopmental trajectories” in brain regions governing social reward and punishment, such as the amygdala, the ventral striatum, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In other words, social media exploits the dopamine pathways involved in addiction, creating cycles that exploit the neurochemical pathways that determine their actions.
I personally struggle with addiction. I find it extremely tough. Our children’s plastic brains are just not in a shape to be able to survive that struggle. This challenge is not a teenage rebellion or some kind of moral panic. It is a systematic neurological manipulation by megacompanies that know exactly what they are doing.
Social media is a major driver of the mental health crisis that this country faces, and the consequences are contributing to the overwhelming of our NHS. In 2024-25, NHS mental health services supported 800,012 under-18s, an increase of nearly 300,000 since the NHS long-term plan first started. I will not go into the figures in detail, but I assure the Chamber that this is not a question of “snowflakery” or wokery; it is a genuine public health emergency, and the problem is not going away.
I say this with some delicacy. I am one of the few Peers in this House who has children of this age. Mine are 18, 15, 13 and 10. In answer to my noble friend Lady Shephard, they are all at different schools, which is a logistical problem for me. None of the schools is winning this battle. In fact, I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that, each year, I have seen this problem get worse. You can feel the algorithms getting more effective and having more of a grip on your children’s lives.
Each year, children spend more hours on the phone. The communal social pressure each year is more intense. Mental health, and self-harming among friends in schools, gets worse. There is more and more disgusting pornographic filth available to young children. Statistically, there are more predators, activated by the addictive escalator of increasingly violent porn, seeking meet-ups with my children. There are more frustrated parents each year watching their children’s attention and well-being deteriorate. The kids simply are not mature enough to handle these toxic tools and this content—and this is even before AI gets to work on their brains with superpowered social algorithms that screw with their heads. It is going to get worse and worse.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, there seem to be two issues here. One is social media and the other is the smartphone, and the two of them are accessed via each other. However, we should remember what a smartphone is: it is a platform for using technology.
The reason I raise this is that—and this is in my declaration of interests—I am someone who believes in and uses assistive technology, and one of the easiest ways to get that is, increasingly, through your smartphone. As a dyslexic, I access literature, often with complicated local accents in it, via technology. Initially, it was an abridged book on tape. You can use it that way, so there is potential here. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about caveats, but there is the potential to benefit people, including in the education environment.
It is one of the oddities that we refer to our phone as something which is a tool. It is a tool for much of the deaf community because they text. Texting is easy when somebody has not been in an environment where they have been taught to write properly, because that is what happens in the deaf community. They become addicted to text speak. Let us be a little more selective about this.
I salute the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for starting this debate and starting it so well. But remember, do not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Make sure this is something you can use as a platform. There will be other ways, and there may be ways around this, but I just say that everything has a price, and this is one. Please remember it. You might be excluding groups that we will be talking about in this Bill and future ones, who use it as something to support learning. I felt I had to say that to throw it into the argument, because it is an important thing to bear in mind.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, in the amendments they have proposed. I also agree very much with the comments made by others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who made some important points, especially about the risk of overloading schools. My noble friend Lady Shephard made some very important points about safeguarding. When, as chief inspector, I reported on sexual harassment and abuse in schools, it was notable how much of that we found to be linked to smartphone use.
I would like to clear up a bit of confusion, because I think we are not properly distinguishing between personal and school-controlled devices. I think the noble Lord, Lord Addington, was heading in this direction a moment ago in his remarks. Every school has many school-controlled devices—computers and sometimes tablets—and it is much easier to maintain the framework of safeguards around devices that are owned and controlled by schools than it is around personal devices.
These devices are suitable for teaching media literacy and many other things or in teaching children how to use technology. They can also very effectively provide technology. The dividing line here is between devices schools are able to control fairly fully and devices that essentially remain children’s property and in the children’s control, and where there will never be the level of supervision needed to make them safe—at least not in the foreseeable future.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I am interested in what the noble Baroness said—that the laptop and tablet learning devices that schools have would be sufficient for teaching media literacy. Does she suggest, therefore, that they should install social media apps on those devices, and teachers would have to create profiles and personas that would start to mimic children so the algorithms would then think of them as children and start to feed them the sort of stuff the noble Lord, Lord Russell, was talking about? Is that really what she is saying? Would it not be easier for the purposes of media literacy for the personal devices that children are looking at, with the personalised feeds those children are seeing, to be used in order to educate them?
Baroness Spielman (Con)
It is perfectly possible for children to log in on different devices. They can log into a social media account and the school can use broader control facilities to ensure that all information is wiped, or all personal details are wiped, at the end of a session. That contains the range of what children are doing in any given session.
To give another analogy, we do not teach children about the risks and harms of drugs with drugs and the paraphernalia for using them in their hands or on their desks. More generally, I am afraid that the history of teaching children about risks and sensible and safe behaviour do not have that much to show that they can be successful.
One of the saddest reports that we published during my time at Ofsted was on child obesity. It showed, sadly, that the schools that were doing the most to promote and encourage healthy eating did not have measurably different obesity rates from the schools that were doing the least. So I think there is reason to fear that simply an educational approach, as has also been advocated here, might not be all that effective.
Finally, I will explain why, although I agree with so much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, I have come to the opposite conclusion. It is important that we think about how to reinforce the authority of head teachers and teachers in this difficult space. With legislation, they would not have to argue the toss with parents to sustain a school policy that will always be disliked by some parents. What we have seen and heard, including expressed so eloquently in this Chamber today, shows that mobile phone use by the young is likely to be at least as harmful to them as smoking, and we have no difficulty with having a ban on smoking in schools. I believe that a ban will reduce arguments and give time back to schools—to heads and teachers—as well as helping children. So I hope that this amendment will be included in the final Bill.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 458 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and my noble friend Lady Kidron. I have spoken on this issue several times in your Lordships’ House, and I will not repeat those speeches here. I am a teacher and have taught for 10 years, but never in a school that allows students outside the sixth form to carry phones to or in school. My noble friend Lady Cass says about mobile phones that the stakeholder view and desire for action in this area is overwhelming. I will talk not about the separate issue of whether smartphones themselves are harmful but rather about whether they should be in school at all for the under-16s.
Students who do not carry phones do not get mugged for phones. In schools that do not allow mobile phones, students talk to each other at break and lunchtime, or play games or go to clubs, rather than staring at their phones. So I am about to be rather brave here: for the first time I am going to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley—at the same time. I do not think that an exception for educational purposes would be workable. You cannot teach these students how to use phones; they know far better than we do. What you can teach them are the dangers. Again, I am going to do a first here and say that it might be rather better on a PowerPoint slide than doing it practically. I really worry about 30 students in a room with their mobile phones—what carnage could happen there? But this is back of a fag packet stuff.
The excuse quite often is that carers need to communicate with people. Actually, carers do not need phones; they need time away to be children. Quite often, the people they are caring for can be very demanding, and sometimes too demanding. Schools are very good at getting messages to students in emergencies. If it is not an emergency, perhaps the child does not need to know right away. Parents do not need to know exactly where their children are at every given moment. If there are emergencies with transport, they can go to a responsible adult and ask for a message to be sent or to borrow a phone. We managed over 100 years in education without mobile phones in schools—why start now?
The Minister said recently that it is up to school heads to make the decision. At a time when, with this Bill, decisions about uniform, pay, admissions and the curriculum are being taken away from school leaders, I think a lot of them would be secretly delighted to have the Government take this decision away from them and take the lead on it, allowing them just to police the phone ban without getting the blame.
Children need time to be children: to learn, to play, to interact and to build and rebuild friendships, face to face. Leaving aside the view of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, which I can see—but schools can provide the technology themselves—none of these is improved with a mobile phone.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendments 177, 183CA, 183CB and 458. As my noble friends Lord Nash, Lord Bethell, Lady Penn and many others have so eloquently laid out, the devastating impact of social media on children is not speculative anymore. It is an irrefutable fact. Social media, as many have said, is addictive; it impedes brain development and exposes children to sexual predators and harmful content, including body imaging. It is fuelling a crisis in adolescent mental health. Last year, more than 800,000 children under 18 needed NHS mental health support. This is a national crisis.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
At what age does the noble Baroness think that children should be taught how to use phones safely?
Baroness Meyer (Con)
Children could use phones that do not connect to the internet—phones that do not access social media—like the old phones, if they need to phone their parents in an emergency. With the mobile phones that we are talking about now, for children under the age of 16, their brains are not developed enough to understand the harms and dangers—and, as we have said, it is all very addictive. Big tech companies know how to get children to look at certain sites. In our generation, we did not have phones and we did not have that exposure to predators, and we did not have so many mental health issues among the youth.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I ask the noble Baroness how on earth she thinks that parents will be able to stand up against their children so they will not have phones? What we are discussing here is phones in school. The idea that we should prevent children under 16 from having smartphones seems to me utterly unrealistic.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
I did not mean under-16s in general, I meant under-16s at school, as in those amendments. However, I agree with some noble Lords that parents also need to be educated. When we see parents pushing a pushchair and children looking at video games and such things, it is probably not very helpful, but this is part of education and we all need to get together to educate parents also. So, I support these amendments and I think that, to help our children’s well-being and future, this is something we should look at.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I too support Amendments 458 and 177, and I am delighted to support the amendments from my noble friend Lady Penn, Amendments 183CA and 183CB, which recognise the importance of helping children in their earliest years. Every day, the mounting evidence underscores a distressing reality. The issue of excessive screen time and social media usage is not a future concern but a pressing crisis that is contributing significantly to a growing mental health crisis among our children. Health professionals, educators, parents and concerned community members all echo similar warnings. Our children’s well-being is at stake and we cannot afford to delay action.
The detrimental effects of this overexposure are multifaceted. Children today are grappling with severe challenges, including disrupted sleep patterns, deteriorating eyesight, hindered speech and language development, stunted emotional and social growth, poor eating habits, as discussed in the amendments on food on Thursday, distorted body image, confusing ideologies taught as fact, diminished educational outcomes and impaired cognitive performance. Recent research highlights the alarming prevalence of addictive behaviours associated with technology use among early adolescents. Only last week, a study revealed that half of these young individuals exhibit a high trajectory of video game addiction, while one in three struggle with compulsive social media use, and one in four face similar issues with mobile phones.
The implications are dire. High and escalating patterns of screen addiction correlate strongly with increased suicidal behaviours and ideation and overall mental health decline. Furthermore, research indicates that one in four children and young people are using smartphones in a manner consistent with behavioural addiction. Smart devices, as well as giving access to harmful online content, carry a whole-body impact on the child, including physical and psychological harms, eyesight and musculoskeletal issues, speech and language issues and implications for sleep. Health professionals are now seeing those issues in their clinics daily, and we need to act now to prevent continued generational harm.
The evolution of smart devices is part of the problem. The product has developed so quickly and in such a way that, if it were introduced into the market now, it is doubtful that it would pass regulation as a safe product for children. Yet one-quarter of three to four year-olds in the UK now own a smartphone, while half of children under 13 are on social media. Shockingly, campaigners are in the position of having to prove irrefutable causation of harm rather than manufacturers proving that their products are safe by design.
Each developmental stage of childhood has unique vulnerabilities that are negatively impacted by the use of smart devices and social media. Children’s brains demonstrate tremendous neuroplasticity and rapid growth, which is shaped by their interactions and stimuli in the world around them. The quality, source and content of those stimuli are essential for children to reach developmental milestones. Unfortunately, there are many harms to normal development when smart devices and social media supplant real-world human interaction. We often hear that social media, smartphones and screens are a parenting issue—we heard it today. However, the lack of coherent public health advice to help parents navigate screens and smartphones is a glaring gap. Unlike on smoking, nutrition or car seats, there is no clear guidance on screen time, content or device use. Parents are left without the necessary tools to protect their children.
The UK is an outlier in its lack of screen time guidance for parents. France and Spain are clear on the harms of screens for young children and advise against screens before the age of five—although five seems ludicrously early to me. The US follows guidance similar to the WHO guidance, with no screens before two. However, in the UK, we remain silent, and it is time we changed that.
Amendment 183CB starts to address this startling omission. From birth to three years of age, human brain development is extraordinarily sensitive. During this period, babies and toddlers require responsive, face-to-face social interactions, as well as the freedom to move and engage all their sense to grow and thrive. Although digital devices have become essential in adult lives, extensive global research has reinforced earlier findings that frequent and prolonged screen exposure in children aged nought to three can disrupt their cognitive, physical, social and emotional development. A study from New Zealand found that two year-olds who had 90 minutes of daily screen time were associated with below-average language and educational skills, as well as above-average levels of difficulties in peer relationships. By the time they were four and a half years old, screen use was identified as an independent predictor of developmental outcomes in this study, even when accounting for various individual child and family factors. This suggests that the effects of screen usage are widespread.
These developmental delays can have significant consequences for school readiness. Research indicates that children who spend more time on screens are less prepared for school, particularly in language and cognitive development. This can hinder their ability to access the early years curriculum and achieve educational success. According to a 2025 survey by Kindred2, 54% of teachers reported that children exceeding the recommended screen time were less ready for school.
Parents and caregivers need to be equipped with the information that would help them to understand the very real harms of screen usage. It is unlikely that anyone would deem it acceptable for a child to bring a TV to school, or to chat with a friend throughout their classes, and yet we are still debating whether smartphones have a place in schools. Smartphones are highly distracting, and many children report struggling to put them down. Consequently, they find it nearly impossible to resist the temptation of having smartphones in their schoolbags or on their person throughout the school day. Restricting these attention-seeking devices meaningfully can significantly benefit children’s focus and ultimately their educational attainment. Research from UNESCO indicates that it takes young people 20 minutes to refocus on learning after being distracted by their phone.
Digital distractions in the classroom negatively affect the educational performance of many students. A comprehensive study involving nearly 150,000 students across 16 countries has shown that increased use of smart devices during study sessions considerably undermines learning and academic achievement. The mere presence of a smart device can drain limited cognitive resources, leaving fewer available for critical tasks and harming cognitive performance. Experimental results reveal that individuals score lower on tests when their phones are in the room, compared to when they are left elsewhere.
Schools that impose bell-to-bell restrictions on smartphone usage, including lockable pouches throughout the school day, report significant improvements in students’ well-being and concentration. Policy Exchange’s 2024 Disconnect report found that schools with effective smartphone bans see GCSE results that are one or two grades higher than those with more lenient policies. School leaders who have implemented such measures report remarkable outcomes; for instance, the John Wallis Academy has experienced a 25% decrease in truancy, a 40% reduction in detentions and an 80% drop in incidents of online bullying. These are outcomes we should strive to see in all schools.
Teachers have noted alarming behavioural issues largely influenced by smartphone use, including refusals to hand over devices when requested, unauthorised and inappropriate usage in classrooms, misogynistic behaviour and online bullying. Problems that arise online often spill over into the classroom, impacting students’ well-being and potential for success.
In 2022, exam boards reported a 50% increase in students failing to submit their devices before public examinations compared to 2019. Additionally, 76% of teachers at schools that permit mobile phones would prefer a complete ban on mobile phone use during the school day. A poll from Parentkind shows that 83% of parents believe that smartphones are harmful to children. SafeScreens has been campaigning since 2022 for a tobacco-style regulatory framework to support the introduction of safe and restricted smartphones for children, along with a statutory ban on smartphones in schools.
Children must be supported by allowing them at least a six-hour window during the school day when they can truly concentrate on their learning, without the distraction of a smartphone at hand. We in Parliament must champion a collective response to this crisis. These amendments would work together to protect our children from before birth, in their early years, into the classroom and to the online world.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I very much support what my noble friend Lady Jenkin has just said—it seems to be an excellent prescription for the right way forward.
We approached these technologies with such innocent optimism when they arrived. I absolutely remember what it was like at the beginning of smartphones. We were worried about how we would get them to everybody and how people could afford them. I remember an early example, with my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold, when I was briefly her Whip in the Lords and she was in charge of education. We were looking at this wonderful new system which would enable us to replace all maths masters with machines—I am delighted that it has not happened. Even Alpha School in Texas, which is part of the latest round of optimism that AI can do everything, is not looking at replacing maths masters either but merely at having AI to help them. We have to be careful about optimism when it comes to new things.
I think we have reached the point with smartphones when we know that they are damaging. We know this from all of the research that has been done and from personal experience—which in my case very much echoes what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, described. Children’s lives at school should be full and social, but the spaces between classes are dominated by phones. All their social interactions are mediated through phones. Even when they are talking to each other, they are talking about what is on social media. The effect on boys, and on their relationships with and ability to relate to girls, is not good.
We have reached the point where we ought to start doing something. We cannot allow this level of harm to continue. I suggest that the Government do something along the lines of the West Dunbartonshire experiment. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Knight, remembers the set-up in West Dunbartonshire where they tested various approaches to teaching children reading. It was supposed to be a five-year experiment but it collapsed after a year and a half, because part of the design of the study was that the schools running various different methods were talking to each other. After a year and a half, the schools that had not been assigned phonics said, “I’m not putting my child through this. The phonics works—we’re going to do that”. It produced a real sea change in the way schools approached teaching children reading, because teachers could absolutely see what the difference was. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin described, we would expect such differences.
Let us set something up and see how it works and what the differences are between schools that have various models—the current model, the intermediate model proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the total ban that I would favour—and see what happens. Let them talk to each other about how they are experiencing this process. Do not try to run it as a total blind trial with only the academics pronouncing at the end; let it be an interactive thing between the schools involved. We would very quickly find out what was working and get a good groundswell for the right solution, which may well be that of the noble Lord, Lord Knight—I do not know.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
Is that not what is happening at the moment? A vast number of schools are, in effect, banning smartphones—as many people would like—some have an intermediate approach, and then there are a few outliers that are not banning them. Is it not the case that the noble Lord is making a good argument not for proceeding with this right now but for going ahead with a proper study on the impact of those various regimes and then acting once we know what we are talking about?
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, there are indeed a number of these things going on, but no organised study with an organised direction is taking place. There is no communication between schools, with them saying to each other, “Yes, we could do it that way”. I am looking at a Government who, I suspect, have not been persuaded of the need to act now. Let us do a study now and get something set up, so that we can definitively get to the best answer. While academies are allowed to be different from other schools, a wide range of policies are being enforced. If we take advantage of that, understand what is going on and allow the schools to share that information as the process goes on, I think we will find ourselves with an answer quite quickly.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I fear that what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has suggested is indeed happening: private schools, grammar schools and schools in wealthy areas are doubling down on their success by pursuing smartphone bans. Schools in areas of deprivation, where family and community ties are the weakest, are being left behind.
Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, I had not planned to speak to this group of amendments, having tabled an amendment that we will debate in the following group. But as I have interests in the founding of Parent Gym and in the early years in particular—about which I hope to speak later—it would be remiss of me not to add a few comments, given some of the very esteemed contributions made in this debate.
I support all the amendments in the group with the exception of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for the reasons that have been outlined. My noble friend Lord Bethell touched on an important point in his intervention: we have a real issue around the different types of parenting and families, from those who are aware of the dangers to their children to those who deploy smartphones as substitute childcare. I fear that all the evidence—as very eloquently put by my noble friends Lady Jenkin and Lord Nash, who cited at length the reports and data around all this—show us that there are families who do not have the resource or means to engage in this daily battle.
I declare another interest: I am on that front line daily with my 14 year-old daughter; I hoped that she might have been here this afternoon, but she has conveniently not made it. It is a daily battle. What children will tell their godparents, when you are not around to hear it, is that they actually agree that you are right and that they wish they did not have their phone. They wish that phones did not exist and that they were not part of their life; they want them because their peers have them.
The report by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, published last week, has very notable commentary about the safety of some of the girls who were groomed by gangs. She talks with real concern—it is in an early section, for those who have not read the entire thing, as I have—about the fact that online activity means that we no longer know what is going on for children. We literally do not know who is in their bedroom at night. Who are they engaging with? Who can forget the case of Molly Russell—the terrible case that an Instagram post led to? There is one place where we can surely assume our child should be safe: at school. It is not an unreasonable request that we, as a society, look seriously at this to care for the health and safety of our children.
I am very aware of the comment by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, but it is the opposite to asking schools to police the use of phones. I completely empathise with the concern about asking schools to do more, but this is removing from them the need to police phones. It gets them off the premises, or at least locked up within the premises, so that bullying cannot happen online, grooming cannot be going on, boys who are being recruited into county lines cannot be harassed or intimidated while they are meant to be learning at school, and on it goes. Your Lordships have heard plenty from others on the various points.
I end on another note. Let us look at what the people who invented these things are doing. We all agree; no one has disagreed with the fact that they are addictive—we all feel it every day. What do the people who invented them to be addictive and who use behavioural science and neuroscience to do that, do with their children? They have screen-free schools—completely screen-free, incidentally: no tablets or laptops—and screen-free homes. What is China doing? It is hoovering up our children’s data to understand everything about our society and drive their behaviours in the most destructive way possible. If you ask AI, “If I were China, what would I do to destroy the West?”, the answer is exactly what it is doing: to destroy and undermine the mental health of whole generations of people. What does China do with its children? It gives them one hour a day, and it drives them to watch science and maths videos. I support these amendments.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group—I was a minute or so late, for which I apologise. I wanted to hear the arguments of those who oppose Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I will just address a couple of those.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that we cannot warn children of the danger of smartphones if they are not using them in schools, but let us be more realistic. The school day is only seven or eight hours, and there are 52 weekends and 15 weeks’ holiday. They are going to use these awful things, whatever we do. But at least schools provide a safe space if they cannot use them—we heard the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about not being mugged on the way to school. I see it in my own schools where, although we have bans, the kids get around them. If they have hair similar to that of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, how do we know whether they have AirPods in their ears? With the so-called magnetic pouches, you can buy a disabler on the internet to get rid of it. The list goes on and on.
I agree with the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that you cannot uninvent them, but they are very toxic. We look back on tobacco and sugar, yet we are allowing these things to go on while people cogitate, when it is so obvious that we should be bringing a much more vigorous ban of these devices into schools as soon as possible. I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we have heard some very powerful speeches this afternoon, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, who talked about a world health crisis. I was also taken by my noble friend Lord Addington, who talked about the importance of technology for special needs. I am going to be brave and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton: I want to see children talk to each other, and I want to see them play in schools.
I remember being absolutely—I cannot find the adjective to describe it. During our debates on the Online Safety Act, we were remembering the young girl, Molly Russell, who took her own life after being groomed online, and her brave father sat below the Bar for the whole of that debate. I thought what a brave parent he was, to sit through that and listen to what had happened.
I do not know whether any of your Lordships saw “Question Time” last week—I do not tend to watch it these days—when one of the questions was about smartphones. A young man of 18 or 19, who had ADHD, pleaded with the panel to ban smartphones. He said, “I am addicted to them—I cannot stop myself using a smartphone. Please ban it”. I thought, “Wow! What a brave thing to say on television in front of everybody”.
Whatever we do, we have to make sure it works. It is no good us passing laws which do not actually work. I remind noble Lords that children who are under the age of 13 are not allowed to use social media. That ban does not happen. I had children at my school who were seven and eight who accessed social media. Whatever we agree, it has to work. My great fear in this whole debate is that it will not work, and people will find ways around it. So I plead with the Government—indeed, with everybody—to have a realistic streak in what we do.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have had the privilege this afternoon of listening to some very powerful and well-informed speeches, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I shall speak to Amendment 458 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and to Amendment 177, which I was very pleased to co-sign with my noble friend Lord Nash. I note the widespread support evidenced by the popularity of my noble friend Lady Penn’s Amendments 183CA and 183CB, which prevented me from adding my name to those as well, which is testament to the cross-party recognition of this important issue.
Noble Lords across the House have witnessed first-hand the dedication of teachers, parents and school leaders, who work tirelessly to create environments where our children can thrive. Today, I speak to an issue that threatens to undermine their best efforts. Amendment 458 would require schools to implement comprehensive smartphone bans during the school day, with carefully considered practical flexibilities for children who need smartphones to access their medical devices—for example, for diabetes—for boarding or residential schools and for sixth forms. This is not about a blanket prohibition without thought; it is about creating the conditions that are necessary for our children to succeed academically, socially and emotionally.
I note Amendment 458A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, and would be delighted to talk to him after this debate in a bit more detail, but I also note the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Spielman about the benefits of using a school-owned device in these cases, and actually did not hear any examples that could not be done on a desktop or a tablet.
There is genuine urgency to address the profound impacts of smartphones on the health and well-being of our children. I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the evidence is mixed. I think one needs to look very carefully, and I thank my noble friend Lady Jenkin for this advice when I sent her an article suggesting that the evidence was mixed. She pointed out who had funded the researchers who were writing the article. We have to be scrupulously careful about both the scale of the sample size in some of these studies and who is funding them.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, it is crucial to take both the personal and professional experience into account when designing policy. The desire for change, including, perhaps most importantly, as we have heard this afternoon, from children themselves, is very clear. We have to reset the social norms around smartphone use among young people before we lose another generation to screens.
The Government have argued that existing guidance on phone use in schools is sufficient, pointing to the fact that every school has a policy. But speaking as someone who was part of the previous Government that created many drafts of that guidance—as the Minister can imagine—perhaps we are uniquely positioned to acknowledge that, while it may have been the right place to start, it has proven insufficient. Good intentions without enforcement mechanisms do not protect our children from the sophisticated algorithms designed to capture their attention. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, we need to move with speed and clarity. Some have questioned—
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
That point has been raised by a number of Members, so perhaps I might ask the Minister, because I am genuinely unclear what the thinking is. I know it is not that no harm happens to children using smartphones outside of school. You do not know who is in the bedroom with them; you do not know who they are talking to. I think that is our starting point. I am not clear from those who are supporting this amendment whether they are saying at least they will have those hours a day when they will not be subject to smartphones or social media. I do not know whether that is sufficient, or whether there are further plans in those Members’ minds as to how to cope with the rest of the week. My view is that that is where most of the damage happens: outside school, not inside school.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness is right that a smartphone amendment on its own is not sufficient. As the Minister said a couple of times on previous days in Committee, I will be coming to that later. I will try to address the noble Baroness’s points. If I have not done so by the end of my speech, I ask her to please intervene again.
Some have questioned why we favour freedom and discretion for school leaders in areas such as curriculum and staffing yet seek to mandate action on smartphones. The answer lies in a couple of areas. The first is about accountability. When school leaders make decisions about teacher pay, qualifications or curriculum, they are held accountable through Ofsted inspections, public examination results and parental choice. The consequences of their decisions are measurable and visible. Smartphone policies operate in an entirely different landscape. Here, schools face external actors: powerful social media companies with business models that are predicated on capturing and monetising our children’s attention. These companies employ teams of neuroscientists and behavioural psychologists to create algorithms designed specifically to keep our children scrolling, clicking and consuming content that ranges from the merely distracting to the genuinely harmful. We can all think of cases that, tragically, have been fatal.
The facts surrounding smartphone usage among children paint a sobering picture. A quarter of the UK’s three and four year-olds now own a smartphone—these are toddlers whose cognitive development is being shaped by screens before they can properly read. This figure rises to four in five children by the end of primary school. We are witnessing the digitisation of childhood itself. The emerging evidence linking smartphones and social media to the explosion in mental health problems among young people cannot be ignored. Research demonstrates that the average 12 year-old spends 21 hours a week on their smartphone, which is equivalent to a part-time job. One in four children and young people uses their devices in ways that are consistent with behavioural addiction.
Beyond mere time-wasting, smartphones fundamentally disrupt sleep patterns and concentration, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords. Applications are deliberately designed for addiction, through sophisticated dopamine triggers, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. This pattern appears consistently across western nations, with research showing that earlier smartphone acquisition correlates strongly with poorer adult mental health outcomes, particularly affecting girls.
The academic evidence is equally compelling. The OECD data reveals that two-thirds of 15 year-olds, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, report phone distractions during their mathematics lessons, with distracted students performing three-quarters of a year behind their peers. Even brief non-academic phone use can require 20 minutes for students to refocus on learning. We are not talking about minor inconveniences. We are witnessing a systematic undermining of educational achievement.
Experimental research has moved beyond correlation to establish causation. Studies where students are randomly assigned different conditions—one of which I will send to my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Knight—prove that simply having a smartphone in one’s bag, jacket or desk reduces attention capacity and cognitive performance. Students with device access during lessons achieve measurably poorer results because the very presence of these devices is profoundly distracting.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I do not disagree with a word that the noble Baroness has said about these weapons of mass distraction. I am not saying that young people should be able to carry them around—I was advocating the use of lockable pouches. However, is it not possible that there are some circumstances where a teacher, for legitimate educational reasons, would want those pouches to be unlocked and for phones to be used? If that were to happen, is it right that it would be illegal?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am not a teacher and probably never will be, sadly—although probably happily for children. My answer to the noble Lord is what was behind my offer to sit down and talk to him. When I talked to teachers prior to this debate about the noble Lord’s amendment, they reacted a little as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, did or suggested that much of this could be done on existing school devices. If there are gaps in that, of course I am very happy to listen to the noble Lord’s expertise. I will press on, or I will be growled at by the Front Bench for going over time.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging debate. As we begin, it is probably worth while identifying that the amendments fall into three related but distinct areas: the use of and regulation of social media, the impacts of screen time, and the proposals for the use of mobile phones in schools. I will respond to the specifics of the amendments. There were times during the debate when, while I recognise the linkages between them, those issues were conflated, which will not necessarily help us to develop clear policy.
In starting, I wholeheartedly agree with noble Lords that parenting is hard. It was before mobile phones, but the point about the ubiquity of screens made by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, makes this even more significant. We are talking about long-standing issues for young people around behaviour, cognitive development, bullying, lack of exercise, mental health, extremism and radicalisation, and crime. I accept some of the arguments about that, but I say in response to my noble friend Lady Morris that, if I remember rightly, these were all issues we were exercised about when we were in the now Department for Education before the era of mobile phones.
That is to say not that this is not a serious issue, but that there is rarely one easy solution to these problems. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friends Lord Knight and Lady Morris that straightforward bans are rarely the solution. I emphasise in responding to these amendments that we need a multifaceted policy response, and that is what the Government are pursuing. We will continue to do what is needed to keep children safe online and when using devices with screens.
We recently published our response to the Education Select Committee report on screen time, which further sets out the Government’s positions on these issues. It is not in fact true that the Government are not doing anything on this whole range of areas—and that goes for the previous Government as well as this one.
Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, would require the Government to introduce regulations about social media access for under-16 year-olds and to commission advice for parents. I am surprised that we have had just one mention of the Online Safety Act in this debate. That Act is the first step in delivering a more positive, safer online environment for children where they are protected from online harms. As of March this year, the Act’s illegal content duties are in force, meaning that children are already protected from illegal content and criminal activity. Additionally, as of April, Ofcom published its draft child safety codes, which have been laid before Parliament. Subject to passing parliamentary scrutiny, they are expected to be in force next month. Services will shortly be required to put in place measures to mitigate risks they have identified, in order to protect children from harm once the codes are in force.
This is not to say—my noble friend Lord Knight was the one person who mentioned the Act—that there will not be a need for us to scrutinise this carefully in the future and to take further action. But it is right that we focus on what this House and the other House considered during the passage of the Online Safety Act, as a first step.
There has also been important debate about where the evidence leads us. There is certainly an enormous amount of evidence in this area but, overall, the scientific evidence on the impacts of social media and screen time on children and young people is mixed, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, says. There is no clear scientific consensus on a negative impact from screen time and social media use on the mental health and neurological or functional development of children and young people. There is a large amount of discussion in this area whereby correlation is confused with causality, but that brings upon government a responsibility to build the evidence base, which is what we are doing. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is commissioning a systematic review to understand the impact of smartphones and social media on children’s well-being, which is being led by the University of Cambridge and a wider consortium of experts and academics. The Government will publish the results of that in due course.
We are also monitoring and learning from wider developments internationally, including in Australia, to share evidence and learn from each other’s experiences. In supporting parents, we have also funded further guidance and support including through Parent Zone. Further research exploring the relationship between social media and child health and how it might be mediated is welcomed, and departmental policies—and the whole Government—will remain agile in light of this emerging evidence base.
We recognise that screen time needs to be proportionate. We do not want screen time to displace beneficial opportunities to socialise face to face and to take part in physical activities. The section of the UK Chief Medical Officer’s report on advice for parents and carers encouraged them to agree with children and young people boundaries, both in and outside school, around online behaviours and time spent using screens.
Amendments 183CA and 183CB, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, seek to update the early years foundation stage statutory framework and ensure the delivery of a public information campaign on the use of screens by children aged nought to five. I have considerable sympathy with what the noble Baroness was saying. It is clear, both for parents of young children and for providers of early years education, that the right framework, proper information and access for both providers and parents is important.
Once more, the Government are not standing by but taking action. The early years foundation stage statutory framework, which was updated last year, has a requirement for safeguarding policies to include how mobile phones, cameras and other electronic devices with imaging and sharing capabilities are used in the setting. It signposts guidance that covers the risks that children in early years settings could be exposed to by using those devices. In September 2025, we will introduce changes to the safeguarding requirements of the early years foundation stage. These were consulted on in 2025, and the changes include a requirement for designated safeguarding leads to have training covering how to ensure internet safety. The safety of our youngest children is our utmost priority, and we continually monitor and review early years safeguarding requirements and guidance.
The “help for early years providers” internet safety guidance was updated in January 2025, following a discussion with the digital standards for early years action group. The guidance highlights both the benefits and challenges of device usage, that devices should be used in settings as a tool to support children’s learning and development, and that sedentary screen time should be avoided.
There are several further resources that parents and providers can turn to, and I very much take the point about ensuring that information for parents is as clear and accessible as possible. That is why we recently updated the Better Health Start for Life website, which provides trusted advice to care providers of children aged nought to five and support for parents. The World Health Organization also provides guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under five years of age, with recommendations on limiting screen time. The noble Baroness, Lady Penn, made the very reasonable challenge that we need to keep ensuring that that information is accessible to parents and to those delivering early years provision. I undertake to continue discussions with the department about how we can ensure that not only now but in the future.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the Minister for giving way. Presumably, all the countries that have introduced mobile phone bans in schools have found ways around this. It cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to find a way through this.
I also wondered whether the Minister was going to comment—perhaps she will come on to this—on the power of the social media companies. In her remarks so far, she has come up with what were, in a former life, perfectly respectable and effective solutions, such as that parents should set boundaries with their children. But we, as parents or grandparents, are now competing with social media companies that have a great deal of power and expertise to disrupt all those good 20th century-type responses.
Lastly, I wonder whether she feels that the figures she gave on schools adopting phone restrictions tie in with the evidence from Teacher Tapp about the level of disruption in lessons that my noble friend referred to.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
On the point about regulation, the reason why I started by referring to the Online Safety Act was precisely to identify the need that was manifest in a piece of legislation that came through this House before my time but which presumably some noble Lords around the Chamber were engaged in and which was precisely about how to regulate the use of social media for children and young people. That legislation did not happen in the last century; it is literally only just on the statute books. I was making the case that it is important, and that it is right for the Government to ensure that it is working properly as a first priority.
The issue of how we support schools to be able to have within them the type of calm behaviour that they need is, of course, absolutely crucial. In response to the question about when we will publish the survey on behaviour, it will be later this year. To come back to the point I made at the beginning, although I very much doubt that the only factor influencing behaviour within schools is mobile phones, everything that head teachers might need to put in place the restrictions on mobile phones that will, along with the other necessary things, enable them to have strong behaviour policies and practice, is, rightly, available to them in order for them to be able to ensure that that is happening.
Lastly, I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I have already said that I see the point of the exemption he has proposed. However, my point is that you have two routes here: the legislative route, which has already begun to be unravelled by the inclusion of a whole range of exemptions; or a positive set of guidelines for head teachers to use to design and develop, in consultation with parents, their staff and the young people in their schools, the appropriate policies for safeguarding children, protecting behaviour and delivering what individual schools need. At this point, the Government believe that the latter is the most appropriate way forward to ensure that children have the protection from mobile phones they need and in a way that recognises the flexibility that will be necessary.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
Will the Minister give way? We had a debate a few months ago on this very subject and I visited the Fulham Boys School, which is a large all-male school with about 1,200 students, to speak at some length to the headmaster. That school has had a ban on phones for about 10 years. The issue is not about having a ban in school but, as the headmaster said very clearly, what happens outside the school. It does not matter what policies you have in place; they will not solve what young people are doing outside of school time. He said the biggest problem he has had in trying to tackle this issue has not been with the pupils themselves but the parents, some of whom are very challenging and regard it as an infringement of civil liberties that anybody should tell them what their children should or should not do.
The real problem is what happens outside the school. The school can have as many policies as it likes, but until and unless we find a way of influencing what happens outside the school—which, as I said, means getting to the young people, because they know themselves some of the harm being done, and perhaps through them getting to the parents to make them realise how their children feel—we will not start to tackle the psychology behind some of the problems we are confronted with.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I do note that I was coming to the end of my comments at 18 minutes—just so the Whips know I was sticking to the rules. The noble Lord tempts me to say that that was exactly the point I made at the beginning: there has been conflation in this debate of the use of mobile phones in schools, the impact of screen time across children’s lives—I can quite understand people’s concerns about that—and, as I have said, the need for us, at a very early stage in children’s lives, to be clear with them about the appropriate use of screens, which is probably practically none, and clear in the information that we provide to parents. The Government are taking action on all those areas, alongside gathering appropriate evidence. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Bethell (Con)
The Minister is quite right to point out that the Online Safety Act did not get much of a mention: maybe it is some kind of PTSD, because some of us did hard yards during that difficult passage. One of the most difficult things was the debate on age verification for porn, which started with all the same arguments we have just heard: it is not technically possible; maybe children can learn by watching pornography; the moral rules around telling children what to do are not crystal clear; the science of whether porn is good for children is not cast in stone, and does not have the longitudinal studies that we need to make decisions on it. All that was heard.
At the end of next month, Ofcom will finally bring in a deadline so that all websites that carry a risk of children seeing porn will have to put in age-verification software. Who in this Chamber now genuinely thinks that was a bad decision? Yet it was fought tooth and nail from that Bench by the previous Government, who had to be dragged to that decision by rebellion in the Commons and a four corners of the Chamber effort here.
The Minister faces a similar storm brewing on social media use by under-16s. Could she, with her multidimensional approach to this problem, help us understand the metrics she will use to judge whether it is right to revisit this issue? How many hours a day do children have to spend on social media? How many predators have to get through? How many grooming gangs have to recruit children in order to abuse them? What metrics will she apply to reviewing this decision?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Well, the noble Lord added considerably to his speech there. I did not use some of the arguments that he suggested were used in this Chamber about porn. I was not in this House so I do not know what arguments and debates went on. Nor did I suggest that there are not considerable issues around young people’s use of social media and the amount of their screen time. The noble Lord is very clear that he believes there should be a complete ban on social media for young people aged under 16. I do not know whether that carries a majority in this House, to be honest. Given that, it is important to demonstrate, as I attempted to do, the action that the Government are already taking to address all those issues, whether it is screen time, the impact of social media on young people, or mobile phones in schools. The Government are taking action on all of them, without necessarily thinking that there is one single silver bullet of a ban that can solve all those problems.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I will be brief. I really appreciate what the Minister said on early years. I think it goes a bit beyond safeguarding, but I will look really carefully at what she said. On the evidence point, she referred to the Children’s Commissioner’s work on the policies, but we need to know the effect of those policies. That is where the national behaviour study comes in. The Minister previously told me it was due in spring, but she said it would be later this year. It would be great to understand why there is a delay, if there is one. Could she be more specific about when we will see that study of what is going on in our schools? I will be happy for her to write.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
First, I said more than safeguarding; I hope she can go back and look at the record to see that. I was pretty sympathetic to the points she made, and I said much more than safeguarding. I share her frustration about when the survey will be published. That is all I can say about it.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and all noble Lords for their contributions. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Bethell for his contribution. I am just so sorry that we will perhaps not see him around this place for very much longer.
On the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran concerning the possession and use of smartphones in schools, as my noble friend Lady Penn said, it may be that 90% of schools have a policy, but, unless smartphones are physically not allowed in schools, bans will be ineffective. Teachers are reporting that children are going to the loo far more often; I see the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who is a teacher, nodding. Some schools use pouches, but the evidence is clear. As my noble friend Lady Barran said, if my smartphone is there, I will concentrate far less than if it is out of the room. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Agnew said, children are very ingenious. I am told there are ingenious methods of opening and closing these pouches by using magnets and various other methods.
On what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said about the consequences for any school or person who did not follow a ban if we passed this amendment to ban smartphones in schools, I do not think for a moment that we are talking about a criminal offence. Surely a duty would do.
I am highly sceptical about what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said about allowing smartphones in schools to teach their safe use. Children know far more about how to use these things than adults. They do not need to see a phone to be told what not to watch. Unless they cannot access social media, pornography or whatever because of age verification, they will watch it. That is what kids do.
On my noble friend Lady Penn’s amendment, which I support, I will make this point. Heads of primary schools have recently been alerted—I used that word advisedly, because none of them can tell me they were aware of any specific notification on this—to the fact that the reception baseline assessment, the RBA, will now require four year-olds to be tested using touch-screen devices, which, of course, they will have to familiarise themselves with before they take the tests. If we bring these screens into schools—
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Does the noble Lord accept that that assessment—the procurement, analysis and evaluation of which started back in 2019—will be carried out alongside teachers, with the ability for teachers to use other methods with children where necessary? This is not something that children will use on their own, on screen.
Lord Nash (Con)
I understand that entirely. I understand that there will be two devices, on one of which the teacher will have to log the responses. The pupil will sometimes use a hard copy, but they will have to touch a screen for some of the tests. So we will be bringing these devices into primary schools, which will accept their existence for these ages. Goodness knows where this might go in primary schools without the kinds of amendments my noble friend Lady Penn is proposing.
The Government have entered into a £20 million contract with Made Tech Group plc to develop the relevant technology for the reception baseline assessment. The contract specifically states that
“the RBA will be the first service launched to schools in a wider suite of digital assessment tools”.
In other words, this is the thin end of the wedge. I hope the Government will reconsider this. I note what the Minister said about hoping that there is very little of this sort of thing in the early years.
I heard the Minister’s response to my Amendment 177. I listened carefully, and I am afraid that clauses and phrases such as “The Government will do what is needed to keep children safe online”, “Online Safety Act”, “scientific evidence mixed”, “correlation and causality”, “build the evidence base”, “publish results in due course”, “recommendations on limiting screen time” and “advice on sleep” do not fill me with any hope. All this sounds to me like statisticians wanting 100 years of evidence before they say the case is proven. The time is now. How much more evidence do we need? How much more damage do we need to see before we act?
I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said about Ofcom, but social media companies are perfectly capable of implementing highly effective age limits if they want to. I am glad he was listening so carefully to what I said and noted some similarity between what I said today and what I said in the purpose clause debate, but I hope that when he checks Hansard he will see that there was quite a lot of new material there.
Concerning my Amendment 177 on banning social media before 16, there are clearly very strong feelings about this across the Committee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said. This is becoming a real issue for working families across the country, and I have no doubt that if it is not dealt with before the next election, it will be a big issue on the doorstep, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. It is no secret that there is support for this not only in this House but across the Benches in the other place, including from a number of honourable Labour Members demonstrated by, for instance, Josh MacAlister’s Bill and other interventions. I urge the Minister to convene a meeting across the political spectrum to discuss how we can take this matter forward, and I ask her now, as a first step, whether she will kindly meet me very soon to discuss how we can take this forward. We may—indeed, we almost certainly will—look to bring this back on Report, but for now I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Farmer
“English local authorities: duties relating to Start for Life offer(1) An English local authority must publish a Start for Life offer for its area on its website under the heading “Start for Life”.(2) A “Start for Life offer” for an English local authority’s area is information about the following services that the authority is aware are available in its area for infants, parents, or carers of infants—(a) health visiting services provided by or on behalf of a public authority;(b) services promoting positive relationships between infants and their parents or carers provided by or on behalf of a public authority;(c) breastfeeding and other infant feeding services provided by or on behalf of a public authority;(d) mental health services provided by or on behalf of a public authority;(e) such other kinds of services that are—(i) likely to support infants, parents, or carers of infants, and(ii) provided by or on behalf of a public authority, as the Secretary of State may specify by regulations made by statutory instrument;(f) such services that are likely to support infants, parents, or carers of infants being—(i) services of a kind mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (e) provided other than by or on behalf of a public authority, or(ii) other services, whether or not provided by or on behalf of a public authority, as the local authority considers it appropriate to include information about in the Start for Life offer for its area. (4) An English local authority must also—(a) publish a Start for Life offer for its area by any other means it considers appropriate,(b) take such steps as it considers appropriate to bring the Start for Life offer to the attention of parents and carers of infants in its area, and(c) take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that the Start for Life offer is kept up to date.(5) An English local authority must have regard to guidance published by the Secretary of State under section (Guidance) when complying with its duties under this section.(6) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (2)(e) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This and the following four clauses require local authorities to make information available about support for infants, parents and carers of infants and include reporting requirements relating to such support, to help ensure children’s safety and well-being in the critical first two years of life.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 179 and 183 in my name. It might be a lighter-weight and shorter debate than the important debate we have just had. I should disclose that, taken together, these amendments are a slightly cut-down version of my Support for Infants and Parents etc (Information) Bill, my Private Member’s Bill, which secured top place in our ballot. I am, in effect, reintroducing it here given the reasons why the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, the Minister for Health and Social Care, was unable to support it when it was debated in September 2024. In those early weeks of the new Government, she said:
“We need the time and we need to be able to roll out our own cross-government package of support for infants, children and families, as noble Lords have today asked us to do. This needs to be comprehensive, rather than piecemeal … the Bill … does not align with how this Government intend to deliver the comprehensive change that our children need”.—[Official Report, 6/9/24; col. 1369.]
One year on from their election victory, I and many other noble Lords who spoke in that debate or who championed better, more systematic support in the first two years of children’s lives, and beyond that point, are keen to hear more about what the Government’s comprehensive package will look like, so these five amendments are probing amendments intended to encourage the Government to share their plans for both the Start for Life programme and the family hubs programme that is integral to its delivery and wider family support.
It is also a second opportunity to reiterate the intention of that Bill then and these amendments now, which is not to specify what a service offer should look like but simply to require local authorities to publish information on that offer. A large body of evidence points to how critical the first 1,001 days of life, from conception to age two, are to children’s future well-being and the opportunities that they can take advantage of. These days are also filled with stress and worry, alongside much joy, for parents and carers, who often do not know what to expect, what is normal, how best to cope or where to turn for help. The Start for Life programme, based in DHSC, included universal support through the named services in Amendment 179. Again, the Start for Life offer is not the services themselves but rather the information that is published about what is available in terms of health visiting services, promoting positive relationships between infants and their parents or carers, mental health, and breastfeeding and other infant feeding services.
Local authorities should also provide additional information on other services as appropriate, particularly maternity, which was not deemed to be in the scope of this Bill, as maternity is primarily about mothers’ health. As an aside, I argued good-naturedly with the legislation clerks that while the baby is inside and connected to the mother, its well-being is practically indivisible from maternal health, but legally that does not hold. I am not rearguing that now, simply explaining why maternity is not specified in the list.
In the mess and the muddle of new babies, all families need to know what support is available and to be able to access it easily. Funding was specifically provided in the family hubs and Start for Life programme running in 75 local authority areas for expectant parents to receive a physical copy of their local Start for Life offer and to be able to find it online. However, without Amendment 179, future funding to provide that information is not guaranteed in whichever form is best once the very welcome 2025-26 settlement of £57 million provided for Start for Life by the new Government runs out. I will return to this subject in a moment.
Amendment 180 would introduce a duty on the Secretary of State to publish guidance to local authorities relating to their duties under the clause that Amendment 179 would insert. Current guidance is non-statutory. Amendment 183 gives accompanying interpretation for the terms used in these new clauses, and Amendment 182 makes provision for data protection. Finally, Amendment 181 requires the Government to publish an annual report that gives a national overview about the support provided in England for infants and their parents and carers, and the outcomes it is delivering.
I turn back to my intent in tabling these five amendments. My Private Member’s Bill, which they are based on, was leftover business from the previous Parliament. An earlier Support for Infants and Parents etc (Information) Bill was poised to go through with much cross-party support in the other place but was pipped at the post by the snap election. I adopted this Bill because knowing what help is available for families in the early years is essential if they are to access and be connected with all that family hubs and the networks of support that they are at the heart of provide. Access, connection and relationships are the three guiding principles of the Government’s approach to family hubs. Here I declare again my interest as a guarantor of FHN Holding, the not-for-profit owner of the Family Hubs Network Ltd.
These amendments do not specify that these services must be provided, so this is not tying the Government’s hands with previous policy detail or incurring a large recurring annual cost. They simply require local authorities to publish what is available and make that information readily available, and the Government to publish that aggregated national information picture.
I was heartened by the Government’s recent spending review, which committed to continuing investment in and expansion of the family hubs programme and to
“working with parents to help give children the best start in life”.
This wording is a little tantalising, though. How far up the age range does the best start in life go? Why has “Start for Life” been dropped from the programme name? I am looking at this optimistically. My hope is that there will no longer be what has proven to be a somewhat problematic divide between early years services for all and early intervention for families with older children. The Family Hubs Network organisation has become aware that some local authorities were forced to deprioritise the family hubs part of the family hubs and Start for Life programme because so much of the focus has been on Start for Life.
Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 183B is in my name and I support the other amendments in this group. First, I draw to the Minister’s attention that this is a probing amendment. It is very long and detailed but none the less intended to generate a discussion of something I feel is very important in a children’s well-being Bill. To exclude the early years seems a lost opportunity; the intention is to generate that conversation.
It is almost 20 years—I have shocked myself by saying how long it is—since I stood as a candidate in Westminster North for the Conservative Party. As an inner-city seat, it was a challenging environment in which to work and to meet people. Deprivation was not uncommon. I remember vividly knocking on a door on the Brunel Estate. As the door opened, the fug of cigarette—and, probably, cannabis—smoke surrounded me. Through the haze, there was what looked to be a very young girl with a baby, probably six months old—now I know better—on her hip. In my shock, in the smoke that emanated from the flat, I said to her, “Is your mum at home?” But she was the mum.
By coincidence, I had just come from an excellent Sure Start drop-in centre around the corner set up by the last Labour Government. I had this moment of clarity, of thinking, “That baby is never going to get to that Sure Start centre”, and that it did not matter who was in government and what was offered—unless we had a proper strategy around early years and a way of reaching that mum, that child’s chances were going to be severely impeded.
I have declared my interest previously, and I declare an interest now, as this was the inspiration for founding Parent Gym, which has run across the country in all the years since it launched in 2010. The intention of Parent Gym, like so many other programmes now like it, was to reach young mums who probably had not had any parenting themselves. The aim was to provide support that was not otherwise available, when reaching out for that support was usually taboo because it came via social services, and they were hostile to the whole prospect of it.
At around the same time, because of my interest in all this, I realised that the beginnings of research were being published into the effects of early life experiences on children. I am delighted to stand in this Chamber today, almost 20 years later, knowing that there is a consensus now around the importance of all the early years and their impact on children—in particular, the first 1,001 days, as we call it—which are so very formative.
We also know now that it is not just those very important years after birth. There is a wealth of research showing the effects of prenatal stress that a mother undergoes. There has been incredible research done in disaster zones, such as after flooding in Puerto Rico, where they have measured the telomeres of the cohort of babies born from the mothers who were in those natural disasters. Telomeres are part of the chromosomal profile that predicts your longevity and your health outcomes. They have found them to be shorter in those babies born in the wake of disasters. We know now that the environment—the family environment, the multigenerational environment—is so very important.
As noble Lords know, I have been involved in some earlier parts of the Bill. We have had important debates about looked-after children and foster care strategy, and so on, but we have not talked at all about the strategy for these families and these very young children. There is such a such a range of evidence now. There is the scientific evidence, but there is also the economic evidence that what we invest in these families comes back multifold for society.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor James Heckman did the analysis and found that the returns on early years intervention far exceed those from the remedial action, for which we all bear the cost much later in life. He found returns of $7 to $12 per $1 invested in preventive steps taken.
In this country, in 2018, the Early Intervention Foundation estimated that England and Wales alone spent £17 billion every year—I am afraid that I do not know the current figure but it has grown since then—on late interventions; for example, in social care, youth offending, mental health, special educational needs and criminal justice services. These are many of the things that we have been talking about in this Bill, in this Chamber, and yet we have not discussed, until today, the opportunity here to prevent some of these issues arising.
The numbers are not abstract; they relate to real lives: lives impaired, opportunities lost, families rent asunder, and public resources consumed by crises and situations that could have been prevented. We have looked at the numbers of children in care. We have looked at the numbers of child protection plans. We have not talked quite so much yet—it is in Part 2 of the Bill—about the persistent educational attainment gap that opens up before formal schooling even begins. Only 46% of disadvantaged children achieve expected language and communication standards at age five, compared with 69% of their peers. That is the Department for Education’s own data.
If it is a question of affordability, we are asking the wrong question. The right question is whether we can continue to afford not to do anything. There is plenty of evidence of what works, and we know that there are already plenty of charities and programmes out there, including some of the government programmes that we have heard referred to today, like family hubs and, previously, the Sure Start programmes. Governments always look at this and try to use piecemeal, locally funded, sticking-plaster solutions, but there remains a postcode lottery as to whether there is an infrastructure for these young families and these children who, through no fault of their own, begin life at a disadvantage.
There are a number of things that we know work. Parenting training works, not just in the programme that I founded but in many others: the Family Nurse Partnership, home visiting by trained nurses, health monitoring done by parenting training in the Incredible Years programme, parent-infant psychotherapy—we do not have any shortage of interventions to refer to about what works. I have not tabled the amendment to be directional about which intervention the Government ought to mandate or explore further, but to facilitate a conversation on ensuring that there is a universal approach to all the children in this country to ensure that they are given the right start and right support in life.
Many charities are already doing some of this work—the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, Action for Children, the Parent-Infant Foundation—but that is no substitute for a national infrastructure. We know that Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, through her Centre for Early Childhood and the Shaping Us campaign, is working to draw attention to all this, but we need the Government to take this and grapple with it in a meaningful way to ensure that we have some way of identifying these children, and some means by which we place them all within the safety net of our society, knowing that how we treat our children is really a measure of what all of us are. I have placed emphasis on the exploration of this, and I hope that the Committee can engage today in a sensible debate to find the solutions.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I support the spirit behind all the amendments in this group. Amendment 486 is in my name, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, for also putting their names to it.
I am assuming that we are, in effect, pushing at an open door in stressing the importance of early years to the Government. The noble Baroness the Secretary of State—sorry, she is not noble yet, though she probably will be when she stops being Secretary of State. I should say the current Secretary of State, together with the Minister, came to a Cross-Bench meeting before the Bill came to our House. A question was asked about early years, and the Secretary of State was very clear that it is an absolute priority. I am therefore taking that as read, and the question is not “Is it important?” but “What do we do about it?”
I should declare an interest: I was part of the parliamentary advisory team that worked with Dame Andrea Leadsom on the Start for Life initiative under one of the previous Governments—I cannot quite remember which one—which in many ways was a concerted attempt by a Government to do something about early years. Not least, we were trying to undo the unfortunate effects of what happened to Sure Start, which I think everyone across the House, regardless of party, would agree was one of the great achievements of the Labour Administration of the 2000s. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a tragedy that we allowed it to wither on the vine.
Of course, the Labour Party did not allow it to wither on the vine; the people of this country, exercising their democratic ability to vote, which of course we in this House do not have, decided to put in place the Government who decided that there were other priorities, or could say that it was important but not give as much clear support and direction to it as before. Inevitably, what then happens is some parts of the country will continue to think it is incredibly important but others, for reasons that may seem good to them at the time, give it a lower priority. That is how you end up with such uneven distribution across the country. The lesson from that for our new Government is that, if a Government of whatever political persuasion are not crystal clear that this is a priority, and if they do not lay down clearly what that means in terms of what must happen and what is non-negotiable, the same thing will happen again.
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.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 183B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash. I am grateful to her for a probing amendment that allows us to think in particular about school readiness. We have already heard about the well-evidenced links between poor school readiness and academic career and lifetime outcomes. Recent research, including from the Centre for Young Lives, has made the link between long-term absenteeism and school disengagement.
I want to think about what school readiness means in the case of neurodiverse children, particularly those with a specific congenital biological learning difficulty, such as dyslexia or dyscalculia. I will highlight four important points that we know about these conditions. First, you are born with them and you will live with them throughout life. Secondly, without identification and support, dyscalculics and dyslexics are likely to suffer long-term impacts to their education, career and health outcomes. Thirdly, with identification and the right support, dyscalculic and dyslexic children can absolutely thrive in school and in future careers because neither condition is a sign of low intelligence or low intellectual ability. Finally, I point to the crucial importance of early intervention in improving outcomes.
If you take those four points together, they present a compelling case for considering the identification of specific learning difficulties as a key component of school readiness. Children with specific learning difficulties will need specific support and, if they get it from day 1, the outcomes for them will be so much better. It is really hard to see how we can deem a child ready to learn if we have not identified a specific learning difficulty and put in place the adjustments that are necessary to meet those needs. So it is not just about securing the foundations for their future learning and giving all children an equal chance to thrive; it is also about obviating any risk that they will be mistakenly judged as stupid, lazy or not trying, all of which have serious impacts on self-esteem, confidence and mental health.
So I very much support the noble Baroness’s amendment, but I would like to see it further strengthened by including a requirement to screen for dyscalculia and dyslexia at the beginning of the educational journey. At the very least, screening for dyscalculia should be included alongside the reading assessments that are already undertaken at key stage 1. My noble friend Lord Tarassenko has suggested that such screening could be made available in every school simply by training two teachers to undertake the testing. Yes, of course there would be a cost involved, but it is a very small price to pay when we think about the long-term economic impacts and the cost to individuals of living and working with an undiagnosed and unsupported learning difficulty. Some 17 years ago, it was estimated that dyslexia can reduce lifetime earnings by £81,000. For dyscalculia, that was £114,000. Goodness knows what those figures would be today—they are 17 years out of date—and we should not forget the cost to the economy of low numeracy, which is currently £25 billion a year.
My noble friend Lord Addington—I like to call him my noble friend—will agree that it is very good news that the sustained focus on literacy and reading scores, and greater awareness, have made it more likely that dyslexic children will be identified. But, for children with dyscalculia, it could be years before an enlightened teacher spots that they are not stupid or lazy but just have a learning difficulty of which most people have never heard. I heard today about a 600-strong school in which there are apparently no known incidences of dyscalculia. The UK prevalence rate is between 6% and 10%, so that just cannot be—
Lord Addington (LD)
There is a great way of discovering that you have no dyscalculia or dyslexia—Japan did it. They just did not recognise the words.
Baroness Bull (CB)
The noble Lord returns to a theme he has raised before.
To conclude, children have 13 precious years to gain the knowledge and the skills that will set them up for their adult lives. All children need to be ready to take advantage of that from day 1, including children who learn differently and therefore need different support from the very beginning.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I rise in support of the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Cash on a national strategy to promote the health, development and school readiness of all children from birth to the age of five. I agree with everything that has been said in this Committee on this subject. The Minister will know that I will always take an opportunity to rise in support of what we will eventually come to: a national strategy for schools, sport, health and well-being.
But, as my noble friend Lord Young highlighted, this should not be just at primary or secondary level. It is vital also to think about this in the context of early years intervention. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, in her place—she is a passionate champion for children and has done an amazing amount of such work in her life. The Centre for Young Lives emphasises the importance of the expertise in this Committee in looking at the early stage of development and focusing not on a postcode lottery of accessibility to services but on a national strategy and trying to bring together all the good work that is under way.
In that context, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, would normally also talk about early years activity and the importance of physical activity for young children’s development, promoting play and an active lifestyle, building physical literacy, enhancing learning readiness and encouraging habits that can be sustained throughout life. Getting confidence into young children through physical activity is vital. I commend to the Committee the work done by many organisations specialising in early years physical activity programmes—Early Movers comes to mind. It has highlighted that there has been a decline in physical activity among young children, and its work therefore brings our attention to that decline. The Youth Sport Trust’s Healthy Movers recognises the importance of providing training and resources for early years staff to support physical and emotional well-being in young children. There are many other organisations—Hidden Talents, Tiny Tots Yoga and BBC Tiny Happy People—all offering different programmes.
The common denominator among Committee Members this evening on this subject is that we really do look to see whether it is possible to bring together a lot of the evidence of best practice in a national strategy. I urge the Government to look at that carefully, because the benefits of early physical activity are undeniable. Improved physical development is the first. Enhanced cognitive development is undoubtedly a benefit. Social and emotional development comes from building confidence, teamwork and social skills. Long-term health is critical in early years intervention. A focus for those early years is important, as are outdoor activities that match those objectives, such as walking, playing in the park and exploring nature, as well as indoor activities such as dancing, playing with blocks, messy play—finger painting with rice—and using climbing frames. These are all important components of early years activity, and we need to structure those activities. That is where Sure Start was so good, as my noble friend Lord Young said. It showed that one could bring all this together and that it was possible to have a strategy that focuses on best practice for all young people, rather than, as I say, having a postcode lottery whereby some were the beneficiaries of the many charities and initiatives.
I have made a short intervention on this, but a really important one on the wider strategy, as far as I am concerned. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that the Government are thinking about responding positively to try to bring together all best practice, in the interests of all our young people, because there is no doubt at all in my mind that the issues and objectives that I have set out should be universally available, and I very much hope that through this Government they will become so.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, was not here at the beginning of this debate, so she has asked me to say that it is really important that there is good liaison between education and health.
I really feel that I am in a bit of a parallel universe. We are being told about the importance of integrated early years help, and we had such a programme with the Labour Government, which was enormously successful. Yesterday, I read an Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis that showed that it reduced hospitalisations for mental health among 12 to 14 year-olds by 50%, and that it
“improved the dimensions of school readiness—communication & language and problem-solving”.
It was most effective in targeting the most deprived communities—so the stories about how the children who needed it most were least likely to get it were not true. The first 700 Sure Start centres were set up in the most deprived areas—and, actually, there was a lot of work that showed that it was the universal element that made it so important.
It is like a parallel universe, when we know that, during the period from 2010 to 2024, there was an exponential rise in child poverty, which is at the root of lack of school readiness and childhood illness, as well as family dysfunction. Nine children in every class of 30 on average will be living below the official poverty line, and that exploded under the coalition and previous Governments as a result of austerity. So, absolutely, yes, we need an integrated approach—but I sometimes feel it might be helpful for the Opposition to acknowledge what their role was in destroying that provision, which was there for the most deprived and for all children and young people.
Baroness Cash (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I want to clarify, certainly from my own perspective and what I said, that there was full acknowledgement of how successful the Sure Start programme was—and I understood that to be the position by consensus across the Committee. So I am very sorry that the noble Baroness feels that she is living in another universe, but it is not the intention of anyone here to cause dissent on an issue on which it is so important to have consensus. I think that everyone who has intervened in this debate has been coming from a very good place.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
I absolutely acknowledge that, but it is important to note that such a provision was available and was defunded. The number of centres was decimated, which has had long-term consequences that noble Lords have been so clear about: the effect on the poorest children of that poverty of provision. I think that is really important to note.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I feel the need to move on. I very much support early years strategy, and I particularly appreciated the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Young of Cookham. I remember a mother and her three year-old daughter. The mother had never learned how to speak to her daughter, who had no speech and had never heard anything from her mother. They were invited to join what was almost certainly Sure Start in north Kensington and, three months later, hand in hand, near Christmas, they danced down the steps of the preschool, singing carols together. That place closed—and this is one of the sadnesses that we have.
I very much support what the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, because I have a granddaughter who at five was said to be stupid. Thank goodness she changed school; she was found to be dyslexic and, I am glad to say, she got a good degree at Edinburgh—but with a great deal of help. To identify children at an early stage, long before they go to school, would make the most enormous difference. It did to my granddaughter, who was extremely unhappy at her first school, because she kept being told she was stupid, and she was not stupid at all. She is one of countless children who are not identified at one stage early enough.
Dare I ask the Minister whether it is at all possible that this Government, from the party that produced Sure Start, which was so excellent, could think one day, when there is a little bit more money, they might reintroduce it again?
Lord Meston (CB)
I, too, want to move on, but I cannot resist repeating my admiration for the admirable Bill last year from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and his work on family hubs. I will concentrate on Amendment 183B from the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, and concentrate on just one aspect of school readiness and the proposed healthy child programme.
I would like to see specifically included in the proposed healthy child programme referred to in the noble Baroness’s amendment the promotion and encouragement before starting school of vaccination against preventable diseases. Many other countries provide for the mandatory vaccination of children, backed by various types of sanctions—including, it has to be said, exclusion from certain benefits and services. I am not suggesting that for this Bill; that is a debate for another day. However, children are not being vaccinated as they ought to be, and surely vaccination is something to refer to expressly as part of any suggested healthy child programme. It is an important and probably essential public health intervention. A failure to vaccinate a child in readiness for school is seen by some doctors as a red flag for possible parental neglect, because vaccination is the most important thing to be done to protect children. I would like to have seen it in the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Baroness Longfield (Lab)
I feel the need to add some thoughts of my own to this conversation, which I am very pleased that we are having. I declare my interest as the executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives. I thank noble Lords for their kind comments on that.
This is a really crucial area of policy, and I am delighted that we are expecting an early years strategy and that we have consensus across the House on this—indeed, with the evidence as well. In the spirit of moving on, I hope that there is cross-party consensus going forward on the importance of this, not only for individual children and their families but for the country as a whole, in terms of employment, growth, crime reduction and health.
I could go on for an awfully long time on this, but I shall not. But I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister might say something in her closing remarks about the conversations that she is having with the Department of Health, because that partnership is obviously particularly important for early years and early years development.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, I support the group of amendments before us, which are well judged. I appreciate that they are essentially probing in nature, but I will make a couple of brief observations.
First, the amendments are important because they focus our minds on long-term strategy. It is often the complaint about government—about any Government; I do not want to be partisan in that regard—that Ministers will often look at what is in tomorrow’s papers and what is going to lead the politics shows on Sunday. At most, if they have particular levels of vision, they might look at what will get them through to the next election.
We know that there must be a much greater focus within government on long-term strategy. The perils of short-termism are no more acute anywhere than in the issue of education. We know that when we look at interventions, particularly early interventions in education, the true dividends of what we provide and invest in may not manifest themselves until 10 or 15 years down the line, but that is no great reason for us to shy away from them. Indeed, it is something that we need to embrace.
Secondly, as other Members have said—I will not repeat the figures—we know that early interventions can create massive dividends for society. Whether that is on the basis of diversion of young people away from future social problems, from justice issues, or of foregrounding, from a societal point of view, in terms of their education, what I think will become an increasing problem, which is the need for early identification of special educational needs—we have seen the explosion in terms of the cost within that. Those are all, if we take it from a very cynical, crude point of view, massive societal gains for a level of investment in early intervention, but on a personal basis, the biggest single intervention is in changing the lives of those individual children. Because I believe that in a society, education can be the great life changer, it can be the great deliverer for young people as individuals.
Thirdly, I believe it is the right focus. We will, in this Committee and other places, spend a lot of time debating the importance of getting qualifications right, getting school transfers correct at different ages, getting the right provision of schools and dealing with curriculums. All those are, I think, very important educational subjects, but the biggest single intervention that helps to determine how successful a child is in education happens before they walk through the school doors in the first place. That is not just my opinion. When I was Minister of Education for Northern Ireland, we commissioned a report entitled A Fair Start, which gathered experts in the field, whether they were academics or people who had direct life experiences. Their strong conclusion was that the biggest single thing that government can do to tackle educational underachievement and raise attainment levels is in that intervention before a child even reaches school.
Fourthly, I say, without entering into the turf war on Sure Start, that it worked well, and when I was Minister in Northern Ireland, I sought to enhance and support it. However, it is also the case that if we are looking at early interventions, we know that there will be families that are at risk of raising children with low educational achievement, and we know that there are communities out there where socioeconomic barriers create problems. Again, from experience and from talking to a lot of people, I think that if we are to have the best early interventions, we need a sense of co-operation and buy-in, particularly from the communities where we are targeting those interventions. If a community in whatever part of the United Kingdom feels that this is simply a top-down solution which is being imposed upon them, and they are being talked down to, the ability for that community to change and to have a level of ownership of education is greatly reduced.
It is important, I think, whenever we look at early interventions that we not only get it fully supported but get it right, which is why I think that the amendments focusing on a strong sense of strategy and taking a very clear look at this are very important.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we very much support the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, and the noble Lords, Lord Farmer and Lord Russell of Liverpool. If we were putting together an early years strategy, we have all the ingredients in this Chamber. Everybody has mentioned the ingredients that will be part of that strategy, from good toilet training on. To my mind, what is really crucial is early identification of problems and then early intervention in those problems. That is the key. We have talked a lot about Sure Start. That was a very good government policy and I pay credit to then Labour Government for introducing it. I know that, in my city, we introduced a number of Sure Start centres in deprived areas. Sadly, they were so successful that the more prosperous parts of the city wanted them as well.
The important thing about Sure Start centres was that they were not just for the children, they were also for the mums and dads. They gave support to those mums and dads in all sorts of areas, from financial support to employment ideas and health: a whole menu of things that were important to parents. Also, which nobody has mentioned, there was outreach provision as well, so that staff from the Sure Start centres could go out into the community, visit parents in their homes and give that advice and support.
We have to be honest with ourselves and remember that there was a world recession and we were all scrabbling around to try to find out where the money was coming from. Perhaps in the UK, in some areas, we made some of the wrong choices, but it was left to local authorities to decide, and many local authorities decided that although there had been a huge reduction in the funding for local authorities, they would keep their Sure Start centres. Sadly, some of them closed. But let us not go back there now; let us celebrate that time but also remember that we have family hubs. Family hubs are perhaps the son and daughter of Sure Start centres and maybe they can, over time, take on some of the other roles that were provided in those previous centres.
Importantly, the amendments say, quite rightly, that there should be two elements. One is that local authorities should make sure that parents are aware of the facilities, information and support that is available to them. It is not just statutory or local authority information; it could be from charities as well. The second is that they can get that information quickly. The Secretary of State must also produce a report that is available to parents and carers as well.
I thank everybody who spoke in this debate: I think it has been really important and useful. There are two things that were not mentioned. The first in fact links to the debate on—dare I mention it?—smartphones. One thing I see that really upsets me currently is parents who, to keep their children quiet or occupied, hand them an iPad. I have seen two and three year-olds with an iPad in the back of a car. I am sure that family hubs will be saying to parents, “That is not the best use of an iPad” and “That is not the way to develop your children”.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, reminded us of going into a primary school where the head teacher said, “I can look at a two, three or four year-old child and see that they might become a problem in the future”. Tony Blair said exactly the same thing some 30 years ago, and there was an absolute furore when he said, “I can go into a nursery and can see the potential criminals of tomorrow”. What he actually meant was that if we do not, as a society, deal with the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, has made, then, yes, that is a probability.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have had another excellent debate and I too thank everyone who has spoken. It is a pleasure to speak on this group because it is, as we have heard, so important to give children the best possible start in life and to prepare them for school. Other speakers, led by my noble friends Lord Farmer and Lady Cash, have already set out the case very effectively for supporting babies, very young children and their parents.
Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, talk about her experience of canvassing—when the door opened and a cloud of smoke came out, revealing a young mother and baby—reminded me of being involved 21 years ago in a piece of research on domestic abuse called Safety in Numbers. We looked at the cases of 2,500 women and their 3,600 children, all of whom were living with very severe levels of domestic abuse. Half the children in that sample were under five, and the average length of relationship before those women had got help was five years, so half those children had lived with severe domestic abuse from the womb. That was my equivalent of the door opening and the smoke billowing out.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, we have had a good discussion on this third group of amendments about the important issue of ensuring that children get the very best start in life. This Government’s opportunity mission is a bold and necessary commitment to break the link between a child’s background and their future success. It begins where it matters most: in the early years.
We have heard quite a lot of discussion, along with some reminiscing and nostalgia, about the last Labour Government’s Sure Start scheme. Without rehearsing the reasons why we no longer have Sure Start, having once had it has at least demonstrated, through the evaluation that several noble Lords referenced, the considerable success of that model. Also, the process of setting up Sure Start under the last Labour Government at least provides us with some hope of and a road map to getting back its very important contributions—even if we do not, in the words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, completely reinstate it.
Amendment 183B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, seeks to publish a national strategy. As the noble Baroness said, this is a probing amendment and I hope I am going to be able to be encouraging about the national strategy. This Government firmly believe that children’s early years are crucial to their development, health and life chances. That is why we have set an ambition for a record proportion of children starting school to be ready to learn in the classroom. We will measure progress through 75% of children by 2028 reaching a good level of development in the early years foundation stage profile assessment at the end of reception. This is not just a statistic or a target—it is around 45,000 more children who will start school ready to learn, thrive and succeed. This measure has seen little progress in years, so it is ambitious—but as noble Lords across the Committee have said, it is ambitious because it needs to be.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, suggested that nobody so far had mentioned the expansion of access to childcare, so I am going to mention it. The Government are already delivering on this commitment through the expansion of access to childcare with 30 funded hours for working parents from September, and we will be investing an additional £1.6 billion per year by 2028-29 to continue the expansion of government-funded childcare for working parents, boosting children’s life chances and work choices for their parents. Alongside that, we are creating 6,000 new nursery places in schools across the country, in the first wave of 300 school-based nurseries backed by £37 million. At the spending review, we announced almost £370 million of further funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries.
Secondly, we will work in partnership with the sector to drive up standards and improve the quality of early years provision. We recognise that early years professionals need more than just praise, although they are very praiseworthy; they need real, practical support. That means offering sustained professional development and working with providers to help spread evidence-based programmes as part of comprehensive plans to drive high-quality early education and care. Only by listening to the expertise and experience of those on the ground can we deliver this together.
Here, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, makes a really important point about the way in which we enable the early identification of those with specific learning difficulties in early years settings. On other occasions, I have talked from this Dispatch Box about some of the additional training and guidance that we are putting in place in early years provision to ensure that happens. I am sure the noble Baroness will quite rightly hold me to account for that in future years.
Improving reception year quality is also critical for setting children up for success in the rest of primary school. We genuinely hope and believe that the work we will put in place will enable children to arrive in school able to learn. As several noble Lords have pointed out, for some children it is not until they arrive at school that they have the structure and the support to enable them to have the skills and development necessary to be able to learn. That is why reception year is so critical. It is also why we have recently announced that for our RISE teams, one of the four universal service national priorities will be how we support reception years to improve. That will involve helping all schools to share best practice, to build partnerships and to drive improvement.
Thirdly, we are strengthening family services. Through family hubs and Start for Life programmes, we are building a joined-up system of support from pregnancy through early childhood. These hubs are already transforming lives in more than 500 communities, offering everything from parenting support to perinatal mental health care. At the spending review, the Chancellor committed to continuing to invest in and expand the family hubs programme.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, and other noble Lords on the importance of a national strategy. I assure noble Lords who have said it is important to talk not only about progress but about how this will be brought together into a strategy that the Government have already committed to publishing a best start in life strategy. We expect to do it this year, and hopefully sooner than the end of the year. All noble Lords made the point about the need to ensure that this is a coherent and wide-ranging strategy to deliver on the strong target set by the Government.
I do not want to pre-empt the contents of the strategy, but I assure Peers that it will build on our commitment to improve children’s early outcomes and next steps on early years reform. It will also give a view about both how delivery will be achieved and how it will be monitored, implemented and reported. Parliament will be able to hold the Government to account on that commitment and the implementation of that strategy.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords—there were many of them—who richly contributed to this debate; it was an important debate. Their contributions have very much made it clear that there is robust support for a transparent early years offer here in this House and that it will remain.
We should not neglect the support that families with older children need. I will go into a lay-by here and reveal that I went to the Labour Party conference in 2018 or 2019, on a windswept day in Brighton. We had a family hubs event going on there, where the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, was one of our speakers. As I was going along the Brighton front, all of a sudden I heard a voice behind me saying, “Lord Farmer, what are you doing in enemy territory?” I looked around and saw the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I said to him, “Lord Ponsonby, family hubs are building on Labour’s Sure Start centres”—and that is what I hope that family hubs are doing.
However, it is not just the nought to five, it is the nought to 19. I know the importance of early years intervention—it is important to get that in place—but currently there is a big cohort of teenagers who need help. Some 44% of our children are growing up in a single-parent family. So family hubs are needed for nought to 19—nought to 25 for special needs. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. As I said, Amendments 179 and 183 should be taken together—they are probing amendments—and I will not press them to a vote.
I also very much appreciate the information that the Minister has been able to share and look forward to this correspondence, or maybe a meeting. Family support and the early years workforce up and down the country are very keen to learn from the full unveiling of this new Government’s comprehensive plans. In the interest of moving on, I say that I am sure that other noble Lords would like her to keep us—and them—closely informed on the developing detail on family hubs and the early years policy. I beg to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Barran
“Court ordered reportsAny court ordered report produced for the purposes of either private or public law cases in family court proceedings under the Children Act 1989 must be done by a qualified social worker.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that all court ordered reports are produced by qualified social workers, for example those under Section 7 of the Children Act 1989.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 183C, which is in my name.
Last year, the revised Working Together guidance removed the requirement for Section 17 assessments—or children-in-need assessments—to be done by a qualified social worker. At the time, although the change was welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and others, some groups, including Ofsted and the British Association of Social Workers, expressed concerns about the change. This was, in part, because they felt that these practitioners—including family support workers, domestic abuse workers and youth workers—already held high caseloads, and, in part, because they do not typically have the necessary qualifications to do this to the required standard needed by the courts, given the gravity of the decisions taken that are based on these reports.
My Amendment 183C is very simple: it seeks to probe, and get on record, confirmation from the Government that only qualified social workers will be able to prepare reports ordered by the courts. There is real concern that this should be the case, and the new arrangements, which are being brought in to merge targeted help and child-in-need provision, could lead to a change in approach.
A court-ordered report for private law proceedings would not generally meet the threshold for child protection and is therefore likely to be held in the team, which includes non-social work qualified practitioners. As the court will order an assessment, I argue that there should be—and my amendment seeks to probe whether there will be—parity with other private law reports and assessments ordered by Cafcass, which are undertaken by qualified social workers. This work is of course highly contested and complicated, so can the Minister confirm that these concerns are unfounded? I beg to move.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I do not question the proposition that substantive court reports should be done by qualified practitioners. Such reports are valuable, and often essential, to the court, providing information, analysis, assessments and recommendations—and not just to the court but to the parties who are thereby helped to settle their differences without a full contested hearing.
Until I heard the noble Baroness’s introduction, I wondered at the nature or extent of the problem that prompted her amendment. Most final reports nowadays—and I mean final reports—are well written, well researched and well reasoned. Substantive reports are prepared by the allocated Cafcass officer—or social worker, in my experience—and social workers often state their academic and professional qualifications. Sometimes, the worker has to be a substitute or a trainee, but in those circumstances the report will be checked and countersigned by a team leader. So, although I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, I do not believe there is problem.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 183C, tabled by the Baroness, Lady Barran.
I will begin by giving everyone in the Chamber some reassurance, although I am sure that I do not need to do this. It is absolutely crucial that everyone understands that, for child protection cases, there is a requirement for a social worker. It is imperative that we make that that point absolutely clear. The issue that has perhaps driven the concern is that of quality, and I will go on to give some reassurance about that. At the end of the day, the absolute imperative is that we do right by, and make the best decisions for, children, and that we have the right people available to make sure that that happens.
In line with the current framework, reporting to the courts can come from a range of experts, as we have heard. The legislation, as written, surrounding court-ordered reports provides a degree of flexibility, depending on the circumstances of the case and the discretion of the local authority or the court. When specifically considering Section 7 reports, there is currently no requirement for them to be prepared by a qualified social worker. It is important that there is flexibility in who may prepare these reports, to make sure that they are prepared by the right person, with the right skills and the right experience. Courts and local authorities should have discretion in determining this, too.
We know that most S7 reports are prepared by Cafcass social workers, with a small number of them completed by local authorities. Where social work leadership or oversight is needed, this should be built into the supervision and sign-off of the reports. Of course, the court has a duty to ensure that the reports are of sufficient quality.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I put on record how much I welcome the noble Baroness’s last comments about a round table, and meeting and talking to a range of directors of children’s services. It is reassuring and the right thing to do, and it builds our confidence in the Government’s commitment to get this very important area of policy right. I appreciate that enormously, because I know that ministerial diaries do not have a great deal of slack in them.
On this amendment, just to be clear, I appreciate the noble Baroness’s clarification regarding child protection. However, I was not worried there was a risk of someone who was not a qualified social worker writing a report in those cases, and I was not talking about independent social workers, nor about particular experts, such as the example the noble Baroness gave of someone with specific medical expertise. I was thinking more about the situation of merged targeted help and child in need teams writing reports when Cafcass is not writing the Section 7 report. In that situation you might have, for example, a youth worker or someone who does not have the expertise and training preparing court reports—I am not saying they could not have it, but traditionally they have not had that expertise.
I will reread Hansard, but I think what I heard was that they will be able to write those reports but under supervision from a social worker. If I have misunderstood and they will not be able to, maybe the noble Baroness could set the record straight now, or maybe she would like to go away, double check and write me a very short letter. I would appreciate that. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Coffey
Review: child maintenance enforcement(1) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review considering whether the overall wellbeing of children is being harmed by the non-commencement of section 34 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (transfer of arrears) and the uncommenced sections of both the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act 2023 and the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023.(2) If the review considers that the overall wellbeing of children is being harmed by the non-commencement of those provisions, the Secretary of State must, within two months of the publication of the review, make a statement setting out the Government’s position on the commencement of those provisions.”
Baroness Coffey (Con)
I start by saying that it is great to see my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott in the Chamber on the Front Bench. She and I worked together when we were in the Department for Work and Pensions, and I have to say that she was an exceptional Minister for the Child Maintenance Service. What motivated us all was improving the welfare and well-being of children.
I start my intervention by flagging that, frankly, I had quite a lot of arguments or disagreements—I do not think you are allowed to argue in the Lords—with the clerks about the scope of this amendment. The clerks consistently reiterated that trying to do something to make it easier for children to get child maintenance was not connected to the well-being of children because nobody could guarantee that the child maintenance payment would go to the child. I pointed out that, for example, Healthy Start does not go directly to the child; the money still goes to the parent, and the parent can buy a certain amount of food, which you hope will go to the child. I am flagging this now because the intention was to bring a particular amendment about commencing certain legislation, and I will talk to that now.
One of the important things is a recognition—it has been referred to already in previous groups—of the impact of poverty on children. Something like nearly double the proportion of families with a single parent are in poverty—I think that is relative poverty—compared to two-parent families. From my perspective and the research that we did, and from looking into this with my noble friend, we felt that aspects of the cost of living were simply not being addressed and that we needed to get a lot more parents to start paying for the upkeep of their child.
One thing that has been a success overall is that, for just over a decade, 1 million children have been accounted for in arrangements made through the Child Maintenance Service. The split is roughly that 60% of those are in what is called Direct Pay and about 40% are in what is called Collect and Pay.
Direct Pay is where a calculation is made by the Child Maintenance Service and one parent is supposed to pay that to the parent who has the child mainly in their care. For whatever it is worth, there is an annual recalculation, but the department does not monitor precisely what happens there. As regards Collect and Pay, I note the Government’s intention today. I will not get into the merits of the decision announced today by the Government about Collect and Pay; I am happy to leave that for another time.
We have a situation in which there are approximately 390,000 children there. In the quarter to December 2024—the most recent statistics that are available—43.6%, basically 44% of children, did not get a single penny. That is 170,000 children. It is fair to say that they got some contribution: about 45.6% got paid 90% or more, but 22% received anywhere between, basically, zero and 90%.
I am also conscious that the Select Committee on which I serve is doing an inquiry into child maintenance, so I do not intend to delay the consideration of the Committee, because I am sure we will come back to child maintenance in more detail at another time. One key thing that may not be realised is that in these arrangements where the interlocutor is the Government—whether through arranging the Direct Pay calculations or Collect and Pay, where money is taken from one parent and passed to another—we should think about some of the issues that that has caused. I welcome what the Government have done, or will do at a certain point, in changing the benefit deductions so that child maintenance now comes at the very top, but the two issues that I am referring to were sufficiently concerning when I was in government.
That is why we supported what were basically handout Bills, which passed through this House. One related to domestic abuse and the other to moving to something where you could have an administrative liability order. After commissioning Dr Samantha Callan, who has also given evidence to the Select Committee, we brought about a Bill that came through this House. I cannot quite remember whether it was shepherded through by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, or the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, but one did one and one did the other.
I was a bit concerned by the answers given by the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about why, in particular, the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act had not been commenced. She started to get into a variety of complications about how complicated it is not only to identify but to justify with evidence whether somebody is a victim of domestic abuse, which concerned me. I appreciate that today the Government have decided to scrap Direct Pay and move everybody on to Collect and Pay, so that will uncover any situation where there is domestic abuse, but I am not sure how long that is going to take, so we still have a real problem. I would love to see it commenced.
On the other aspects and the liability order, this is why we put in place, or helped to facilitate, the child support Act. That was done to make enforcement quicker. Let us be candid. Approximately £700 million is owed to parents. There are a variety of ways in which that can happen. However, one of the ways particularly seems to affect self-employed parents who are due to pay. Without entirely repeating the legislation, the intention of the Act was to speed up the process of getting a liability order. At the moment it takes nearly six months to go to a magistrate, having exhausted multiple other avenues. The outcome of this was supposed to be to reduce that to a maximum of six weeks. I am really concerned that this Act has not been commenced. There are a variety of reasons, I am sure, including something to do with Scotland. However, we should get on with it. A variety of things have been said today about children’s well-being, on phones and other issues that have already been addressed on aspects of poverty strategy. This is a real action that could unlock a lot of money for young children, and I believe that we need to get on with it.
More broadly, I am conscious of the fact that only the Government can do a lot of this administrative liability. That is not just because they are the only ones who can do this sort of order; it is actually in law. If you have an arrangement through the Child Maintenance Service, you cannot then go to the small claims court yourself and say, “This person owes me money”. Everything has to be done through the hands of the Child Maintenance Service. This was one of the devices to try to speed that up.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend in her endeavours with this amendment. We worked on child maintenance together in the department. It became a real campaign. We were turning every stone to ensure that money that was due to children got to them. I could keep your Lordships here all night with the tricks that people played to avoid paying their maintenance, although I will not. It was truly shameful that people whose relationship had broken down were taking it out on the children, making life very difficult for those who were trying to bring them up.
Somebody would do Direct Pay and pay up, do their own arrangement and everything would be working well; then, when they thought that the Child Maintenance Service was off their back, what would they do? They would stop paying. The enforcement teams would write saying that they had not paid. They would give a raft of pathetic excuses. The enforcement team would then get involved, it would take for ever and there were these vast outstanding sums that should have gone to children. You would go back to Collect and Pay. There would be sums involved that would need to be taken from the amount of money.
I cannot tell your Lordships the lengths to which people will go not to pay their child maintenance. It is shameful and disgraceful. The sooner that these commencement orders are enacted, the quicker we can get money to children and the better their quality of life. I support the amendments in my noble friend’s name. It was quite something to have the two of us on the case of people who did not pay their child maintenance. I would love to be back there doing that now. I hope that the Minister will pull something out of the hat for this.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I too support the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, on this. She was asked whether this affects the child’s well-being, since the money does not go to them. Of course it affects their well-being.
I can tell your Lordships of a family that I know. I know that hard cases make bad law, but theirs is pretty typical. The husband disappeared. There were four children at home. Those children have survived only because of the determination and hard work of the mother. If she was not the strong character that she is, those children’s well-being would be a lot worse than it is now. There is no question that it affects the children’s well-being. I quite agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, that it is a disgrace. If anything can be done to improve the situation, whether it is the noble Baroness’s amendment or something else, I will be right behind it.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lady Stedman-Scott, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have made an incredibly strong case for the importance of this amendment. As my noble friend Lady Coffey said, the Lords Public Services Committee has a live inquiry into this very important topic.
The statistics are stark, as we heard, with over a million children covered by child maintenance agreements but enforcement still not being effective enough and too many parents making no payments at all, paying irregularly or paying insufficient amounts. When I was running the domestic abuse charity SafeLives, non-payment of child maintenance was incredibly frequent and caused huge problems in the lives of children and their mothers. As other noble Lords have said, at its simplest, non-payment exacerbates either the risk of poverty or the actual poverty that so many single-parent families face. In cases of domestic abuse, non-payment was often used as a means of coercion and control over a mother and her child, raising the risk of harm to them both. The anxiety that this creates, and the pressure that this puts on a mother, directly impact the well-being of her child.
We also saw the longer-term impact, in physical and mental health problems for the child. The Institute for Public Policy Research has found that child maintenance currently lifts around 140,000 children out of poverty across the UK. Conversely, when payments are not made, the impact is devastating. Finally, we know that child maintenance is not just a private matter between separated parents but a fundamental determinant of a child’s well-being and future life chances. When maintenance payments fail, society bears the cost through increased demand on public services, educational support and healthcare interventions.
As my noble friend so simply and clearly put it, there are two pieces of legislation on the statute books that need to be commenced. I hope very much that the Minister will confirm that the Government plan to do that and that we can make progress on unlocking the £700 million that belongs to our children.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am not surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, managed to persuade those in a position to be persuaded that this amendment should have the opportunity to be discussed this evening. There is something refreshing about the idea of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Stedman-Scott, rightly pursuing people who owe money for their children and who have that responsibility. I have no doubt that my noble friend Lady Sherlock and the current Secretary of State will be equally relentless in making sure that families are paying for the children for whom they have responsibility, and that is quite right.
I know from what the noble Baroness said that the intention of this amendment is to probe and push on the progress being made with each of the pieces of legislation that she talked about. I hope to provide some reassurance on that.
First, the powers within Section 34 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act enable debt owed to parents or the Secretary of State to be transferred to other parties, including debt collection agencies. This power was introduced as an option to deal with the £3.8 billion debt burden that had accrued under the former Child Support Agency. A proportion of that debt was owed directly to the Secretary of State, and I am assured that the issue of Child Support Agency debt has now been resolved. The Child Maintenance Service has strong and effective enforcement powers, including imposing prison sentences for non-payment.
On the specific point about debt collection agencies, there is no evidence that using debt collection agencies would actually secure more child maintenance than current enforcement powers. In fact, a previous trial absolutely demonstrated that, so there is no evidence that commencing this power would have a positive impact on children’s well-being.
Secondly, the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 introduced powers that, once commenced, would enable an administrative liability order to be made against a parent with outstanding child maintenance arrears. As the noble Baroness says, this introduces savings in court costs and time. I am pleased to confirm that progress is being made to implement the necessary legislation to bring this power into force as soon as possible. The Government are working with His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service and the Scottish Government to establish a process for implementing ALOs, and plan to introduce regulations to Parliament by the end of this year.
The Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act 2023 recognised that direct pay may not always be appropriate for victims and survivors of domestic abuse. The Act intended to provide them greater protection when using the Child Maintenance Service, by allowing them to move to the collect and pay service but only where there is evidence of domestic abuse. The Government recognise that removing opportunities to use the Child Maintenance Service to inflict economic abuse will benefit the well-being of children. However, many victims and survivors would be unable to provide that necessary evidence as required by the Act. For those who could, there are risks that providing evidence of their experience of abuse and reliving events could lead to further trauma.
That is why the Government today published our response to the consultation, Child Maintenance: Improving the Collection and Transfer of Payments. It sets out plans for reforms to introduce a service that protects all parents from financial abuse and, importantly, includes no requirement for victims and survivors to provide evidence of their circumstances. These reforms, therefore, go further than the provisions contained in the 2023 Act to protect victims and survivors of domestic abuse. They will have a positive impact on children and their well-being, as more child maintenance liabilities will be enforced, leading to more money going to children, which I know is the objective of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, in moving this amendment.
I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance for the noble Baroness to withdraw this amendment, although she has already identified that she has other ways to put pressure on the Government to ensure progress, and I have no doubt that she will continue to do so.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
In consideration of what the Minister has said, of which I am conscious of certain aspects, I am pleased, in particular, to hear that the Child Support (Enforcement) Act should come into effect by the end of the year. I will take up some of the other matters to which she referred directly with the responsible Minister. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Addington
“Early intervention and screening at first contact with the justice system(1) Within two years of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a strategy to protect and promote the wellbeing of children in police custody.(2) The strategy must set out—(a) steps which should be taken to ensure that all children taken into police custody are screened for SEND and neurodivergence using a nationally approved methodology,(b) the accredited training police officers and legal representatives of the children must complete to support the child’s wellbeing and to aid recognition of SEND and neurodivergence,(c) mandatory access to sources of wellbeing support during any police interview, and(d) minimum standards for the treatment and conditions of children detained in police custody.”
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, on the spur of the moment, having read through the amendment, I have decided that I would like to hear the Minister’s answer.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
I was hoping to speak to this amendment.
Lord Addington (LD)
I have to move it otherwise you cannot speak to it.
The linkage between the criminal justice system and those in it and special educational needs, neuro-divergence and many disabilities is something that a lot of us have known about for a long time. This amendment suggests that we get early recognition and assessment of such conditions upon first contact with the justice system. There are lots of schemes that suggest this will help. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police and Merseyside Police have autism awareness badges that provide information so that the police can interact properly with people. It is becoming more and more apparent that, if you have problems with written work or communications, you are going to struggle with the criminal justice system. It is blindingly obvious when you give it a little thought.
We also know that, for people from certain economic backgrounds who might struggle with the education system, criminal activity becomes, to put it bluntly, more of an acceptable career path. I want nothing more, nothing less than to see that the Government are thinking about this and the approach to it. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I want to express some concerns about Amendment 183CD. Its intentions are clearly excellent, but there are nevertheless some real concerns to take note of here.
Diagnoses of special educational needs are made by educational psychologists and experienced clinicians. To ensure there is consistency in diagnosis and treatment, it is important that that continues to be the case. By contrast, “neurodivergence” is a term with no clinical definition or standard. In a world where stigma about mental health conditions has been reduced, or in some cases even reversed, it is, as we all know, increasingly common for teenagers and adults alike to assert their neurodivergence. Sometimes, that leads, in essence, to a claim, by or on behalf of the individual, that they should be able to self-identify into additional services or special treatment.
In the case of the criminal justice system, the hazards of that are obvious, and, if children, parents or their lawyers see an opportunity, they will have a strong incentive to take it, irrespective of whether they have a true diagnosis that warrants that treatment. So, although it is of course sensible for police to obtain information about a child’s diagnosed health or educational conditions that are relevant to their detention and treatment, and so to make proper inquiries, that is one thing, but to set up a parallel diagnostic system leaning on a concept that does not have a clinical definition is another, and is clearly wasteful and risky. Those concerns should affect any consideration that is given to this amendment.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I do not think that the amendment says that it should not be qualified practitioners who carry out the assessments. We already know, in general terms, that 85% of young offenders have special needs. It is important for their future journey that the type of special need is identified by a qualified practitioner.
Baroness Barran (Con)
As drafted, the amendment explicitly suggests what my noble friend referred to. Proposed new subsection (2)(b) says that the strategy must set out
“the accredited training police officers and legal representatives of the children must complete to support the child’s wellbeing and to aid recognition of SEND and neurodivergence”.
Lord Storey (LD)
I am grateful for that clarification. Maybe this could be picked up on Report, but it is hugely important. As my noble friend Lord Addington said, there is a young offenders centre in Wavertree where qualified staff assess pupils and provide for their needs.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to this amendment, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I thought, from the original groupings, that we were also going to talk about Amendment 502T, but I gather that is no longer the case, so the Committee will be relieved to hear that my speech will be even shorter.
Like my noble friend Lady Spielman, I do not support the noble Lord’s amendment, although I accept absolutely that it is a real sign that a child or young person has been failed by both their family and the services designed to support them if they end up in police custody. But the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s guidance regarding the treatment of children in police custody is clear. It already states that children should not be held overnight in police cells, suggesting that time will typically be very limited in police custody. It is also clear on the role of the local authority where there are concerns about the child’s welfare, and the child’s right to have an appropriate adult present to explain their rights and help them understand the situation.
In practical terms, even if we could magically find an educational psychologist to go to the police station, I question whether that really is a good time to assess a child for special educational needs and disabilities, since it is a particularly stressful situation. As my noble friend Lady Spielman said, very specialist skills are required for this. To reiterate, there is no high-quality definition of special educational needs and disabilities and no clinical definition. My noble friend already said that there is no clinical definition for neurodivergence. Currently, definitions of SEND vary from school to school and within different forms of SEND. This confusion would open the door to misinterpretations. For example, a child could have ADHD, but that does not mean that they are incapable of making decisions. With respect to the noble Lord, who is not in his place, I suggest it would be very hard to make the amendment work in practice.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 183CD is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for stepping into the gap so that we could have a brief discussion on it. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is not here because he has a lot of experience of, and a background in, this field. It would have been helpful to have heard from him. I will move to the end of the comments I was going to make to reassure him: there are no plans to set up a separate system.
I echo the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. On screening for special educational needs, disabilities and neurodiversity, it is important to bear in mind that police custody is primarily a place of safety and investigation. Normally, a child would be there for a very short time. There is a high likelihood of a very stressful situation and an unfamiliar environment. For those reasons, we do not believe that police custody is likely to be an appropriate setting to assess special educational needs and disabilities, or neurodivergence.
The amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish a strategy intended to protect and promote the well-being of children in police custody, with a particular focus on provisions relating to children with special educational needs and disabilities and children who are neurodivergent. The Government’s manifesto was clear that particular care must be taken when the police are investigating children. Children should be detained in custody only when absolutely necessary, and where there are opportunities to divert children away from custody they should always be considered. It is, as we have heard, particularly important where the child has special educational needs and disabilities or is neurodivergent.
More broadly, the Government’s young futures programme is about intervening earlier to ensure that children and young people who are facing poorer outcomes and are vulnerable to being drawn into crime are identified and offered support in a more systematic way. Effectively identifying the right young people early enough and ensuring that they are accessing evidence-based support is what prevention partnerships will aim to do.
The rights and entitlements of children in police custody are clearly set out in a statutory code of practice, code C to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Under code C, all children in police custody must be provided with an appropriate adult whose role is to safeguard their welfare, rights and effective participation. When a child is detained in custody, the custody officer must notify a parent or guardian as soon as practicable, explaining the reasons for the child’s detention and where they are detained.
In addition, all detainees, including children, have access to health care professionals while in custody. These professionals play a critical role in identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring appropriate care. Interestingly, as we have heard, different police forces are looking at different ways they can train their police officers. Distraction tools such as books, colouring books, puzzles and foam balls have been provided for some police custody suites by organisations such as the Children’s Society and UK autism charities. These help a child to settle while they are in custody. We are of course always looking for examples of good practice.
I am also aware of the work under way in some violence reduction units, such as London and Cleveland, which provide custody navigators for young people in police custody involved in or at risk of serious violence. Custody navigators offer support to those young people at a time of crisis, or at a so-called reachable moment—a moment when otherwise hard-to-reach demographics are away from their usual environment and are potentially more willing to engage with offers of support. Even though we have explored the issue of the appropriateness of some of this work in those settings, it is important to recognise that police officers and legal representatives need to undergo training that equips them for working with vulnerable suspects such as children who are neuro-divergent.
The College of Policing has also published an extensive neurodiversity glossary of terms, intended for all police officers, staff and volunteers, to raise awareness and enhance understanding of neurodiversity. The National Police Chiefs’ Council has a dedicated neurodiversity portfolio chaired by ACC Matt Welsted of West Midlands Police, who has established a neurodiversity working group. Its work includes supporting police officers to design and deliver a service to be proud of, relating to neurodivergent victims, witnesses, suspects and residents. We are all aware that there have been distressing examples where such manifestations have not been recognised; everything is now being done to recognise them.
In the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and ask him to consider withdrawing the amendment that he has moved on the noble Lord’s behalf.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. I agree that neurodivergence does not really have a case in law; as it is not my amendment, I can be as rude as I like about the drafting. I wanted to get the idea across of a divergence of approach across the police forces in the United Kingdom, as well as divergence between how seriously you take various conditions.
The police will be very aware of how you deal with somebody who has bad literacy, as virtually all the prison population—something like 70% or 80%—has bad literacy. With other conditions, such as autism, there is great concern; people with autism are greatly overrepresented in prisons as well. Perhaps you do not react to social signals, or you do not understand what is going on, or you are easily led. I have heard all these things said about people on the autism spectrum.
What I wanted to get over to the Minister, and I think I did, was the picture of a diverse situation. There are screening tools available suggesting how you should conduct an interview; how you go about that is important. The police have got this horribly wrong in cases in the past, which has meant wasting huge amounts of time and money and caused a lot of distress.
I thank the Minister for her answer. I will go away and consider whether I think it needs to be brought back; rather, I will consult the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and do that. This is a real problem. That is why I took the Committee’s time to move the amendment but, having heard the Minister’s answer, I beg leave to withdraw.
Baroness Walmsley
“Review of free school meal eligibility and pupil premium registration(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, conduct a review of—(a) the number of children in England who are eligible for free school meals but are not claiming them,(b) the number of children who are eligible for free school meals but are not registered for the purposes of pupil premium funding,(c) the number of additional children who would be eligible for free school meals if the income thresholds had been uprated in line with inflation since 2018, and(d) the number of additional children who would be eligible for free school meals if the income thresholds were set at £20,000 per annum after tax.(2) A review under subsection (1) must include an assessment of—(a) barriers preventing eligible children from claiming free school meals,(b) disparities in take-up rates across different regions and demographics, and(c) the financial and educational impact of under-registration on schools and local authorities.(3) The Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament setting out the findings of the review, including any recommendations for improving registration for and take-up of free school meals and pupil premium funding.(4) The review and report required under this section must be repeated annually.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires a review of free school meal eligibility and pupil premium registration.
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.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I speak briefly to the two amendments in this group proposed by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, which I have signed.
In particular, I want to probe and press the Government on free school meals and auto-enrolment. I know from lived experience how they changed my life. Rather than running home from school to have my dinner and then running back, with very little engagement and social time with my peers, we were instead able to eat together, talk, socialise and, in my case, discover some new foods such as lemon meringue and cheese flan—I kid you not: if my secretary and PA support, Lisa, from Sheffield Council were here, she would tell your Lordships that, often, when I went to conferences on behalf of Sheffield Council, I would say, “Ask them if they do school dinners, because that’s what I would like”. We joke, but sometimes young people get a set menu and do not get a chance to taste other foods. I am of south Asian origin, and I must say that onion bhajis did not hit the mark at my school.
More seriously, the other issue that I want to challenge the Government on is the one around the pupil premium. We have all seen that, when that extra support goes in early on, particularly when it is for young people who could benefit from free school meals, the extra money empowers teachers and teaching staff in schools to decide what they need for the young person—it could be an additional teaching assistant in schools or it could be one-to-one support or after-school stuff. We are not just talking about school meals here; we are talking about things that would change the lives of young people.
I want to press the Government and I want the Minister to respond to the point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about auto-enrolment. They are pushing in the right direction, but they are not quite there—and we would like, at this stage or at the next stage, to push the Government to do the right thing. I welcome the announcement that we heard around what will happen next year with more young people being able to access free school meals. With that, I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 189 and 191 to 193 en bloc. I thank all noble Lords who have made such valuable contributions to this group thus far.
On the Thursday just past, we heard some excellent speeches in your Lordships’ House on the various issues relating to the provision of healthy, nutritious food in schools and the possibility of providing eligible children with free school meals and activities during the holidays. It is most opportune that we now have the ability constructively to challenge His Majesty’s Government around the base provision and right of those children eligible to take advantage of free school meals during term time.
Amendment 189 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Lister and Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, seeks to require the Secretary of State to review free school meal eligibility and pupil premium registration. It is absolutely correct that schools and local authorities should have complete and full data, and that those pupils who are eligible for free school meals actually take them up. They are clearly the pupils most likely to need free school meal provision. If His Majesty’s Government would please listen to the eminently sensible suggestions from other noble Lords last week, including those in this Committee right now, those meals will consist of healthy, nutritious food, with fruit, vegetables and low sugar levels in both food and drink. Healthy nutritious food and free school meals for every pupil eligible will hugely aid the learning and development of children in the UK.
Both Amendment 191 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett and Lady Lister, and Amendment 193 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Lister and Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, seek to change the system of enrolment for free school meals so that there is auto-enrolment for all eligible families. It appears that difficulties can arise during the application process and, for some, the forms can be overly complicated, but it is crucial that eligible families are able to access this provision. We understand that changing the system in this way is far from straightforward, but some local authorities are investigating how to make such a system work, and our observation to the Minister is that this is surely worth fighting for. Ensuring that all pupils who should receive free school meals do indeed receive them would, we believe, be a top priority on every Bench of your Lordships’ House.
Amendment 192, in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Lister, seeks to expand free school meals to all children in state-funded primary schools. While we agree that it is vital for all students to be able to access a healthy, nutritious meal at school, we suggest that this scheme would be potentially expensive to implement and that there could be a more efficient and appropriate allocation of resources and funding within school budgets. That is not to say that providing free school lunches for all primary school children in state-funded schools is a bad idea—in a perfect world, of course, it is a great idea—but we suggest that a detailed analysis is required of how much it would cost. Is it realistic to have some contribution from parents, even if small? What impact would it have on the other elements of school life if the school and the local authority had to find the funding without additional resource from His Majesty’s Government? These are just some of the questions we seek answers for from the Minister, and we look forward to hearing His Majesty’s Government’s response.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, the amendments in this group relate to free school meals and follow on, of course, from the interesting debate that we had last week on wider issues relating to school food. Amendment 192, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, would extend the provision of free school meals to all pupils attending state-funded primary schools. The Government are clear about the benefits that children enjoy when they receive a free and nutritious lunch. They support attainment, because hungry children cannot concentrate and learn. By improving behaviour, nutritious and free meals also lead to better outcomes, meaning that children can get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.
It is in recognition of these benefits that this Government have confirmed that all children in households receiving universal credit will be eligible to receive free meals from September 2026. This represents a significant expansion of support to over 500,000 children. The Government have chosen, though, to focus this on the most disadvantaged households, which we are backing with over £1 billion in funding. This is on top of the 3.4 million children who are already provided with free meals by the Government. Moreover, by widening access to free meals, and doing it in the way that this Government have chosen, we will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of this Parliament, reversing the trend of rising child poverty that we inherited from the previous Government.
This is the priority that this Government have decided on. Of course, it goes alongside the rolling out of free breakfast clubs to every primary school pupil, which we had the opportunity to discuss last week, meaning, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, that significantly more children will have the benefit of both a free breakfast and a free lunch. Alongside that, as we have talked previously about, we are expanding government-funded childcare and legislating to cap the number of branded school uniform items. These are all serious developments in the Government’s plan to break the unfair link between background and opportunity.
Amendments 191 and 193, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Walmsley, seek, as we have heard, to ensure that all households meeting the eligibility criteria for free meals would automatically receive this without having to make a claim—something which is required under current provisions. The first and most important point is that the process of now linking free school meal entitlement to universal credit makes it far simpler and more likely that there will effectively be an automatic understanding of the eligibility for free school meals. We want to ensure that all families who need it are able to claim the support they are eligible to receive. That is why we provide an eligibility checking system to local authorities; this is an online portal that makes verifying eligibility for free meals quick and easy. We are rolling out improvements to this system, to allow parents and schools to review eligibility for free school meals independently, which will make it even easier for families to claim the support they are entitled to. These actions will support the take-up of free meals. However, we will keep under review the extent to which free meals, and all the benefits that come with them, are being taken up.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
The Minister twice mentioned monitoring the take-up. Do the Government know how many families should be claiming free school meals? That would surely help in understanding how close the Government are to reaching the goal that all noble Lords are asking for, which is free school meals for everyone who is eligible. What is that number? I do not need the answer now, but do the Government have that information, because presumably they should do?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My point was that linking free school meal entitlement to universal credit will make it much easier both for families to apply and for us to monitor the levels. However, I will respond to the noble Lord on his specific point.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply and all noble Lords who have spoken in favour of this important group of amendments. I assure the Minister that, as I have said today and last week, I very much welcome the expansion of eligibility for free school meals.
On Amendment 189, it is important that when the Government come, as the Minister has promised they will, to monitor the uptake under the new eligibility rules, there is enough detail in there. My amendment mentions demographics, regional differences and cultural differences and so on. All that would give a good and useful set of information to help the Government to develop policy even further.
I am not going to go on any further about free school meals—I could go on all night. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, resisted it and so will I. I beg to withdraw the amendment.