House of Lords
Local Plans (Burial Space) Bill [HL]
Friday 11th September 2026
(4 days, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Local Plans (Burial Space) Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Local Plans (Burial Space) Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her positive engagement with me on this Bill, at Second Reading and since. I also thank Adam from our Lib Dem office for his help and advice in drafting the Bill, because all I picked up was that there was a need in the country for burial space. He helped me draft it and the Minister positively engaged. If she does rise, I am sure she will let the House know about the positive outcome that we have been able to achieve.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I rise briefly to help send this Bill on to another place. In this case, that is not a spiritual euphemism, merely a reference to the House of Commons, where, of course, a very important debate is taking place today. On Wednesday, we had a Question about the funeral industry that was not wholly unconnected with the matter before us in the Bill. I am one of those who spoke in support at Second Reading. It is interesting that no amendments have been put down, which means that the House of Commons will have the maximum chance to debate it and take it forward.
I will just add that one of the issues raised—I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for bringing it forward—is that different communities clearly have different attitudes to burial. Broadly speaking, and it is a broad-brush statement, some communities, over a period of 100 years or more, have become increasingly used to and comfortable with cremation, but there are other communities in this country that prefer individual burial, and with a rising population, that has put increasing pressure on burial spaces. I wish the Bill well, and it is not much of a prediction to say that this is an issue that is not going away.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Mohammed. I can call him my noble friend because, until last May, he was my local councillor. I hope he achieves as much in this place as he did in mine.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for managing this Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House, and all noble Lords who have contributed so constructively. How we bury our dead is a hugely important issue, but one which is too often overlooked or which people feel uncomfortable talking about. It should not be so.
Edmund Burke said that society is a partnership of the dead, the living and the unborn. It is only right that we can lay our loved ones to rest with dignity, and therefore right that local authorities make the necessary provisions for burial space. Just last month, it was reported that 17 local authorities in London will run out of space by 2040, and Camden, Hackney and Tower Hamlets already have. So, as the noble Lord says, there is a need for this timely Bill, which promises to address a gap in our planning framework to ensure that these issues are addressed. We look forward to its progress in the other place.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for bringing this very important matter to us through this timely Private Member’s Bill, which helpfully coincided with the publication of a new National Planning Policy Framework. It remains the Government’s position that local matters, such as burial space, are best addressed in local plans rather than legislation, so that local planning authorities retain the flexibility to respond to the particular circumstances of their areas and the needs of their local communities. I appreciate the comments from my noble friend Lord Stansgate on this.
Some of the events we heard about the other day in the Chamber—genuinely shocking events that took place—highlighted that this is an issue where, although local authorities play a key part, there may be further work that government can do in terms of regulation and so on. I echo the thoughts expressed in the Chamber to the families of those affected by that recent scandal.
The National Planning Policy Framework sets the policy expectations for what should be considered in local plans and in decision-making. I am pleased to update the House that the new National Planning Policy Framework was published on 17 August. The definition of “community facilities” in the NPPF has been updated explicitly to include cemeteries and burial grounds, in recognition of concerns raised that these local assets have not been sufficiently recognised in national planning policy. This means that all relevant policies in the NPPF relating to community facilities also apply to cemeteries and burial grounds. This includes that development plans should be informed by an understanding of any existing deficits and additional requirements expected in the availability of community facilities and, where appropriate, should allocate land specifically for community facilities. That applies to local authorities in London as well, of course.
I hope that the recent changes made to the NPPF provide reassurance to the noble Lord that the concerns he has raised have been carefully considered. They were extremely important and are now reflected more clearly in national planning policy.
Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill [HL]
Friday 11th September 2026
(4 days, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, the terrible Grenfell tragedy exposed serious, deliberate and dangerous building practices that put, and still put, lives at risk. The estimate from the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee is that 3 million people may be affected. There are between 5,900 and 7,400 buildings over 11 metres with unsafe cladding, and the National Audit Office estimates that between 9,000 and 12,000 buildings of 11 metres—or five stories—or more have fire safety defects. Of those with unsafe cladding, the latest government figures show that over 2,200 buildings of 11 metres or more have not even started remediation.
The impact on leaseholders is profound. Inside Housing reported that one in five contemplated suicide when faced with the enormity of the safety scandal. Insurance premiums soared, with some leaseholders paying up to £2,000 for a flat, and the average being 56% higher than those without defects. Service charges and waking watch costs add to the significant financial burden on leaseholders.
Leaseholders are paying a very high price when they have done absolutely nothing wrong. The bricks, mortar and dangerous cladding are not theirs. Others are profiting, or have done, from this scandal: construction companies, contractors and material suppliers. My Private Member’s Bill seeks final and swift justice for the thousands of leaseholders whose lives have been for ever harmed by the scandal of deliberate wrongdoing by others.
The principles underlying the Bill are these. First, leaseholders will not be liable for any costs incurred by remediation of building safety defects. Secondly, leaseholders must not have costs included in their service charges, and any who have already fallen foul of this dubious practice can apply to the First-tier Tribunal for repayment. Thirdly, all leaseholders will be covered by the provisions in the Bill, whatever the height of their building. The Government have always argued that buildings below 11 metres are a much lower risk and so are not covered by the Building Safety Act. However, one leaseholder in a low-rise block has a bill of over £65,000 for remediation. Under the provisions of this Bill, the 1.3 million leaseholders in low-rise flats will also, rightly, be protected. Fourthly, all systemic defects, as well as unsafe planning, are covered by the Bill, and are listed in Clause 3. Those four principles form the bedrock of the Bill.
The second part of the Bill defines liability and, for the first time, includes the manufacturers or suppliers of materials that contributed to a systemic defect. The manufacturers of the highly flammable cladding that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire have so far escaped liability. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry report spells out their culpability, and the police have yet to bring prosecutions. This Bill rights that wrong. The Government have focused their efforts on the removal of unsafe cladding. The failure also to concentrate on other safety defects, such as the lack of fire stopping or compartmentation, has resulted in buildings being deemed safe once cladding has been removed, when they are not.
Part 3 of the Bill deals with getting the work done by setting a clear, legal timeframe for work to be completed. Thousands of leaseholders are living in dangerous buildings nearly 10 years on from the Grenfell fire. This will not do. People deserve much better than the procrastination that has been permitted. The Government’s remediation acceleration plan demonstrates an understanding of the need but is inadequate in its failure to enforce timely action. The Bill radically changes that approach by expecting a remediation plan within 28 days of the Building Safety Regulator confirming that systemic defects exist.
Further, the Government are required to publish a new and more demanding remediation acceleration plan, including target dates for the completion of work. Clause 17 details the timeframe for completion of remediation. Once a plan has been issued, there are 24 months to get the work done and, where defects are identified as being urgent, six months. There are penalties too in the Bill for non-compliant developers, as they will be banned from involvement in any residential building work and from applying for such.
So far, manufacturers of, for example, the ACM cladding that largely contributed to the deaths of 72 people, have avoided financial penalties for their failures, some of which were deliberate. Under Clause 12, those responsible for remediation will be able to recoup costs from manufacturers where the product failed to meet the relevant British standard or European harmonised standard. Such action is long overdue. To protect residents from future building disasters, any new development over 11 metres or five storeys has to hold a developer’s licence from the Building Safety Regulator.
Part 5 of the Bill enhances the rights of leaseholders to vital information about the building and any defects. A protected leaseholder under the Bill will also have new rights to claim against the responsible person for any loss as a result of a systemic defect. An award from the First-tier Tribunal can include damages due to identified losses and any remediation costs already paid by the leaseholder. For too long, leaseholders have been battling for justice without direct support from an identified person. The Bill creates a leaseholder remediation ombudsman to do just that.
The Bill puts the rights of leaseholders first and foremost. For the first time, all buildings, of whatever height, are included. The Bill lays the responsibility and the costs of remediation where they belong: on developers, contractors, and material manufacturers. Leaseholders have new legally enforceable rights and dedicated support where needed. Leaseholders will be fully protected from all remediation costs, with a legal route for recouping those already charged.
I have many to thank for their knowledge and expertise in forming this comprehensive measure: the Property Institute, End Our Cladding Scandal and, in particular, Adam Ball and Mark Fisher.
The Bill demands that justice for leaseholders is at the heart of putting right the scandalous and disastrous behaviour of those responsible. I beg to move.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on introducing the Bill, and I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, to her new responsibilities on the Front Bench.
At the moment, there is legislation that protects leaseholders and shared owners, but not all buildings are protected, not all leaseholders are protected, and not all safety defects are protected. It is worth making the point that the people we are talking about did before they bought what every noble Lord would have done: they employed qualified solicitors and qualified surveyors, none of whom found any problem at all. Likewise, the lenders who supplied the mortgage did exactly the same. So the people we are talking about are in no way responsible for the problems that confront them.
What are these problems? They include non-cladding defects not being fully funded in government schemes, leaving buildings half safe; non-qualifying leaseholders facing ruinous costs, which is not the position in Wales, where they have no such exclusion; eye-watering buildings insurance premiums; high service charges; and costly and ineffective waking watches. Unlike other home owners, these leaseholders cannot sell and move if they need to move for a new job or if their family has grown.
One particular injustice, touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, relates to leaseholders in a building under 11 metres with unsafe cladding—perhaps the same cladding as Grenfell had—where the insurers insist on remediation as a condition of insurance. Those leaseholders are not protected by the Bill.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, progress has been unacceptably slow. Some 2,146 buildings are still waiting to start and, of the 1,833 that have been completed, many are incomplete because only the funding for the cladding has been granted.
The previous Government did a lot, but not enough. They were rightly held to account by the then Opposition before the election. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, spoke of
“the utmost importance that this building safety issue moves forward without any further delay”.
Crucially, she did not confine the crisis to cladding; she referred to families trapped with
“dangerous, flammable defects, whether that is cladding, missing fire breaks or wooden balconies”.—[Official Report, 27/3/24; cols. 770-771.]
Perhaps more relevant is a commitment made from the then Opposition Front Bench on 26 April 2022, when the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, spoke in support of an Opposition amendment:
“We on these Benches have consistently argued that all leaseholders should be protected from the cost of remediating historical cladding and non-cladding defects and the associated secondary costs, irrespective of circumstance”.
She then criticised the then Government:
“In sticking rigidly to the position that a minority of leaseholders will have to pay sums that, although capped, are still significant, in order to resolve a scandal that they played no part in causing, we believe that the Government are not acting equitably and will not ensure that the most vulnerable leaseholders will be protected”.
She concluded that:
“If the Minister is unable to accept it, we will seek to divide the House, with a view to ensuring that all leaseholders are fully protected”.—[Official Report, 26/4/22; cols. 205-206.]
When the Government produce their own Bill—and it would be good to hear when that might happen—I hope the Bill will fulfil all the commitments that I have just mentioned. In fairness to the new Administration, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has recognised the stress and emotional upset caused by these issues, and particularly referred to Vista Tower, where leaseholders are facing a second round of works to fix the non-cladding defects left untouched and during the first remedial project.
All leaseholders and shared owners need to be protected from building safety costs, with no arbitrary height, residency, wealth or ownership exclusions. All serious building safety defects should be covered, including internal and structural defects. There should be a government delivery and funding backstop across all funding schemes, which fixes first and then recovers from responsible parties later, so people have certainty and confidence restored to the housing market.
Nine years after Grenfell, leaseholders and shared owners should not still be navigating a maze of height thresholds, qualifying leases, partial schemes and voluntary promises. The Bill begins with the right moral and practical principle: innocent leaseholders did not cause the problem; they must not pay for it.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on this building safety Bill. I admire it for its hard-line radicalism in firmly establishing that, if a residential leasehold building has serious systemic defects, the leaseholder who did not design, build or sign off the works should not be the person who pays for the clean-up.
One proposed change that is quite radical, as we have heard, is the no minimum height or storey threshold. Although I tend to agree with both the Labour Government and the Tories before them that there are fewer fire safety issues in lower-level buildings, I would rather the law was less rigid about risk assessment than using the tape measure approach and fetishising 11 metres. I also appreciate that the Bill is aiming to expand protections for all leaseholders, when it comes to building safety and regardless of which storey their flat is on.
But I have one concern: could this backfire and share the miseries caused by the building safety regime downwards, even to ground-floor flats? This matters because of the unintended consequences of excessive risk-averse regulations. After the tragedy of Grenfell, there was a rush to caution that was understandable, but that then sometimes led to the law resulting in unnecessary work being commissioned under the banner of safety.
I tried to push back against the “remediation at all costs” mentality driving debates on the then Building Safety Bill. That well-intentioned legislation has created layers and layers of costly bureaucracy—think of Part 4— and has contributed to spiralling and exorbitant service charges and maintenance costs for buildings over 18 metres. This in turn has had a devastating impact on individual leaseholders and even the leasehold property market. According to Hamptons, 37% of England’s leasehold flats have service charges exceeding a threshold at which many mortgage lenders will not lend, leaving affected flats effectively unmortgageable, hard to insure and extremely difficult to sell. Do not let us make lower-storey leasehold flats fall into that sort of quagmire.
I appreciate that this Bill intends to move building safety away from service charge recovery towards a more punitive enforcement mechanism to make developers, construction, the supply chain et cetera pay, but all the time I was reading the Bill I kept considering that the real culprit here is leasehold itself. Indeed, leaseholders want to take responsibility for their own homes, but cannot. You have bought your home, and you assume that you will have control over ensuring it is safe, but then you discover that, due to some feudal legacy, you are a mere tenant in bondage to a landlord or freeholder, dependent on them to decide what actions are needed to keep you and your home safe.
What we really need to do is to end leasehold for good, but we have been talking about abolishing leasehold since the 1880s. The inherent draconian unfairness of the system has been accepted by Ministers from all parties and championed, indeed, so eloquently and frequently by our own Chief Whip—well, when he was in opposition. Abolition was then a totemic commitment of the Labour manifesto, and I was excited. But here we are, depending on the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to pick up the rotten pieces of another Government reneged-on promise to end what, to be honest, is bleeding people dry and causing widespread misery for millions of householders.
The personal tragedies that this causes are documented very well by groups such as the Free Leaseholders campaign, and it is just shameful. We are reduced to trying to make ever greater numbers of organisations liable for flat safety to take the pressure off leaseholders. Even if this Bill delivers leaseholders better rights—certainly it does on paper—I am worried that its sweeping powers to make everyone else pay will create other regressive social consequences: for example, building owners swamped with information requests; or developers facing pipeline paralysis; or the floodgates being opened to multiple litigation disputes.
At a time when housebuilding numbers are so low—it is actually a crisis that we are not building enough houses—I would like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to respond on how she believes we can balance the warning from the law firm Devonshire that some of the sanctions in the Bill will
“grind construction to a halt, put a pause on ongoing work … until every deficit is rectified”.
Is not that just the sort of barrier to growth that we do not need when it comes to urgently needed housebuilding? The country needs that kind of growth to happen.
To finish, as the Bill covers conversions and refurbishments as well, it will not be just big construction but small building firms and contractors as well that could be in scope for blame, and that just worries me.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I, too, take this opportunity to welcome the Minister to her post. I support this Bill and, in doing so, I must first pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Pinnock. As our local government spokesperson, she has lived and breathed building safety for years. I, on the other hand, am the housing spokesman, which means that, while she does the heavy lifting and gets to grips with the complex technicalities, I get the distinct pleasure of standing up here and loudly agreeing with her.
Let us be honest: agreeing with my noble friend Lady Pinnock on this issue is probably the easiest job in Parliament today, because we on these Benches believe that she is entirely and profoundly right. We all have an interest in ensuring that any legislative framework is workable, of course, proportionate—and that takes into account what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just said—and capable of being delivered.
Too many leaseholders continue to face uncertainty, financial hardship and lengthy delays while defects remain unresolved. Campaigners have argued that stronger protections and clearer obligations are required if confidence is to be restored and remediation accelerated. I noticed from some of the latest figures that sales of flats have stalled, and it is not surprising. This is a big sword of Damocles hanging over their construction. I strongly agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, regarding leaseholders and those in shared ownership, for whom he is a great champion. I can only do the nodding dog in the back of the car, but I welcome his expertise in this area.
There is much common ground between this Bill and the Government’s forthcoming remediation legislation. Both seek to ensure that unsafe buildings are remediated —tick—and that those responsible are held to account. The difference is largely one of emphasis. The Government’s Bill will, I expect, focus on getting buildings fixed as quickly as possible. My noble friend is focused on making sure that the people living in them are treated fairly while this happens. Frankly, we need both. A building can be remediated without a leaseholder being protected, but that would still leave an injustice unresolved. These two Bills are not rivals; they complement each other.
The Building Safety Act 2022 was a decent start, but it left behind gaps so wide you could drive a fire engine through them. The most glaring of these is the arbitrary 11-metre-high rule, which has been mentioned. I have spent a lot of time looking at housing, and I am still searching for the scientific evidence showing that smoke checks the height of a building before it decides to be dangerous. If you live in a flat that is 11.1 metres high, the law shields your wallet. If your flat is 10.9 metres high, in essence, the law says, “Best of luck, here’s a five-figure bill for repairs”. It is absurd. A building’s height should not dictate human safety. This Bill would sensibly strip that artificial barrier away.
We also have to talk about what counts as a defect. The current system seems to assume that, if the cladding is safe, the building is paradise. But leaseholders are routinely hit with massive bills for things such as rotting wooden balconies, faulty fire doors and internal wiring that looks like it was put together by an optimistic amateur. My noble friend’s Bill introduces the concept of systemic defects. It says quite simply that, if the developer builds it badly or wrong, the leaseholder should not have to pay to fix it. Imagine buying a brand new car and, several hundred miles down the road, it breaks down while you are in the driving seat, and you are told, “Well, it was a defect that was caused in the factory, but you’ve got to foot the bill to put it right”. I think you would, quite rightly, have a few choice words to say.
This is why I hope Ministers will look carefully at some of the strongest features of this Bill. Its wider protections for leaseholders, its broader approach to building safety defects and its challenge to the current height thresholds all have the potential to strengthen the Government’s legislation. Ministers have a wonderful opportunity here to stop tweaking at the edges, look at what we are proposing today and steel their nerves. They can absorb these provisions, scrap the height limits, expand the definition of “defects” and give their own upcoming legislation some real teeth. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, regarding leasehold tenure and look forward to working with her on the forthcoming Bill. I am delighted to support my noble friend, and I urge the Government to steal the best bits of this Bill as soon as possible.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome the Minister to her new role. It is also a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, who reinforced the very strong case that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, set out. I declare my interest as chair of a charity pro bono that owns student accommodation in London, some of which falls within the current limits under the Building Safety Act and would certainly fall within the extended limits of this proposed legislation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, certainly knows a thing or two about this area. She led the council in Kirklees and spoke from those Benches at the time of Grenfell, nearly 10 years ago. I recall that because I was the Minister in the Lords who spoke on that area. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham was also in the department at that time. I little thought that, 10 years later, we would still be looking at these issues and promises that remain unfulfilled. Successive Governments must take a share of the blame for that. There is no doubt of that. There have certainly been some constructive measures in the Building Safety Act and much compensation has been paid, but much remains to be done. I will say a little bit about that later.
It is impossible to think of a constructive case against the civil liability that this legislation deals with at under 11 metres. There is a lot of detail to be looked at in how it applies, capacity issues and so on, but the fact that less serious issues are confronted below 11 metres, which I accept, does not mean that there is not individual harm done to many leaseholders and the many people affected by this, which should be rectified. I back that wholly. I back Clause 12 in particular, which would make provision for liability on manufacturers, who have much to do to fill in some of the gaps that remain in liability. Local government certainly has a share of responsibility, but a lot of the providers of the material have yet to step up to the plate to share some of that responsibility. I have no hesitation in saying that.
Therefore, I would like to say something about the clear criminal liability issues, which are still to be dealt with and which this legislation does not deal with. I understand why, but here we are, nearly 10 years after the Grenfell fire, and nobody has been held responsible. It is absolutely astounding. No company has been prosecuted. That has added complications because the provider of the cladding, Arconic, which was damned in the Hackitt review, has not been banned by the Government. It is still a supplier to the Government, as far as I tell. Answers to me indicate that it is still supplying.
The Government’s answer to that, no doubt rooted in some legal advice, is that it cannot be banned because this is sub judice and that banning it would have an effect on possible prosecutions. However, those prosecutions are not happening, so the whole thing is circular. It has not stopped the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea from putting Arconic on a list so that it is not used there, so I encourage the Government to ban it. That is what needs to be done. The company has been held liable for damages. Its insurers have come forward and the company has paid some compensation. However, at the same time shareholders are doing very well out of it. They have been paid massive dividends. I am a capitalist. I think we are all in favour of a market economy, but it works only if people are held responsible for what they are doing, and that has not happened.
I certainly do not blame the Minister, who is new in post. Nor do I blame the Government, as it has been successive Governments. However, this needs tackling and something needs to be done. As we all know, justice delayed is justice denied. It is an outstanding issue; there have been no prosecutions after 10 years. Memories fade, witnesses die, victims die. This needs tackling. The Government, who are the people who can put this right, must do something about that.
In the meantime, I am strongly in favour of this legislation. There is much detail that needs to be looked at as it moves forward, but I am sure that we are all behind the principle. We need to look to the detail—either in this legislation or the Government’s proposed legislation—to make sure that we draw an end to this for the victims of Grenfell, so that they feel satisfied that we have done something about it and that no future Grenfells are dealt with as this one has been.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Pinnock on presenting her Private Member’s Bill—the Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill—to your Lordships’ House. It is a vital tool in remedying the remaining outstanding issues arising from the failures that led to the Grenfell Tower fire and many other fires over many years. I also want to thank her for her determined campaign over the years, not just in your Lordships’ House but broadly across the country, working with leaseholder groups, to resolve the issues for leaseholders. I declare my interest as a vice-chair of the All-Party Fire Safety and Rescue group.
The Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, stands as a reminder of the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017 in which 72 died, 70 were injured and 223 escaped, the victims of the Lakanal House fire of 2009 in which six died and 20 were injured, and survivors whose lives were all irrevocably changed. As others have already said, thousands of buildings remain unsafe, and government funding covers only the replacement of cladding.
The noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, rightly said just now that the criminal liability following the Grenfell Tower fire has not been resolved and this must continue to be a priority for the Met Police. I understand there are still a large number of open cases, which should be encouraging, but I hope that they include manufacturers of construction products, too.
I want to focus on how the Bill clarifies and strengthens where responsibilities sit, especially for leaseholders who have, through no fault of their own, been severely let down by the state not closing loopholes, and by failures of builders and the housing sector. It is needed because, despite many reports and reviews, including Acts of Parliament such as the Building Safety Act 2022, and building standards statutory instruments, the developers and builders are still refusing to shoulder the responsibility for their failings, or for their suppliers and subcontractors, and are expecting everyone else to do so, including leaseholders, who face not just inexplicable bills for failures by others but, because of that, find their flats unmortgageable, unsellable and unlettable.
It is an absolute scandal, and it is extraordinary that it requires a Private Member’s Bill to remedy the issue, given that the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and the Hackitt report made it clear how standards needed to change urgently and who was responsible. It is worth remembering that the problems uncovered after Grenfell included cladding panels on the outside of the building that were not appropriately fireproofed but which were sold as such and which contractors put up on the building, some of which were not inspected properly. There is no doubt that this was against regulations, and the Judith Hackitt report exposed many other breaches of regulation, not just at Grenfell but, as more buildings were checked post Grenfell, across buildings recently built or renovated.
Scandals have been uncovered across the country. In one tower block, a whistleblower reported that, the week before a fire inspection, all the fire doors by the stairs on each floor were removed and replaced by approved ones, and a few days after the inspection, the new ones were removed and the old ones were returned. This was not a few pockets of bad practice; this was illegal practice in order to save money—illegal practice that could cost the lives of residents in the event of a fire, as happened at Grenfell.
The last Conservative Government believed that the Building Safety Act remedied the legal loopholes, but, as my noble friend Lady Thornhill and others have said, it excludes buildings below 11 metres in height, as if they never caught fire and as if illegal cladding were safer at a lower level. The Grenfell Tower fire started on the fourth floor and was immediately dangerous at that level and above. My noble friend Lady Thornhill listed the other building defects not covered by the BSA, of which there are many.
We need to face up to the fact that the remediation work on the 4,000-plus buildings over 11 metres is still nowhere near complete, while thousands of leaseholders in buildings under 11 metres are still caught in a Catch-22, with unsafe blocks of flats with non-compliant ACM cladding and developers insisting that leaseholders should pay, rather than those that actually put up the illegal cladding. The Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, addresses these points and puts the responsibility where it lies, back with those developer and construction companies.
This Bill clearly sets out the liability and recovery arrangements, remediation obligations, responsible parties and contractual arrangements. My noble friend Lady Pinnock and others have outlined the appalling effect that this remediation crisis has had on leaseholders, who have watched their flats lose substantial value, so that many are now in negative equity and the sales market has stultified. Some leaseholders are also being asked to pay for 24-hour fire watch on their building, even though it is clear that the defective work that has made it unsafe should be the responsibility of the developer or contractor. This Bill remedies that.
The other problem is that it is evident that, in many cases, there are still no real deadlines or timelines for making homes safe. The G15 organisation, which represents the largest housing associations in and around Greater London, says that it will take until 2036 to complete all its remediations—nearly two decades after the dreadful fire at Grenfell Tower. But other owners of large amounts of housing are not even saying when their work will be completed.
I say to the Minister that, if the Government do not accept my noble friend Lady Pinnock’s Bill, the current slew of lawfare will continue and possibly grow. The courts have already had a number of cases. In URS Corporation Ltd v BDW Trading, a developer sought to recover the costs of remedial works undertaken to address the structural defects in a residential development. This was in the Supreme Court, which rightly disagreed.
My noble friend Lady Pinnock referred to the massive hike in insurance costs for leaseholders. In Tobias v Grosvenor Freeholds (The Central), at the First-tier Tribunal, a landlord had the benefit of an insurance-backed scheme that could have provided a route to remediation costs. The tribunal said that the availability of insurance did not take away responsibility under a statutory regime of remediation of defects. So one party was saying that it did not need to pay as the other party had insurance, even though the responsibility was clearly theirs. This Bill provides clarity about that responsibility.
I cited these cases very briefly to illustrate a key point: nine years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, some parts of the industry are still trying to get out of their responsibilities, especially their financial responsibilities, often leaving leaseholders in the firing line. This short, clear Bill closes many of the legal and contractual responsibilities, which will resolve issues for leaseholders of today and tomorrow, and ensure that developers, builders, contractors and housing bodies must take responsibility for their roles under law. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government will provide the justice that leaseholders deserve and agree to the progress of the Bill.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate in the place—just for today—of my noble friends Lord Jamieson and Lady O’Neill of Bexley. I too welcome the Minister to her place.
I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. We speak often, on our third floor, and she has spoken on these matters tirelessly and from the heart for a very long time. It really is a very long time, for the House knows only too well why we are here. More than nine years on from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the consequences of systemic building failures are still being felt across the country.
The Public Accounts Committee estimates that up to 3 million people may have been affected by the cladding crisis. As of this year, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, between 5,900 and 7,400 residential buildings of at least 11 metres in height have or had unsafe cladding requiring work. However, only 38% have completed remediation, 16% have started and—the truly appalling figure— 47% have not begun at all. This is clearly not good enough. From these Benches, we accept that successive Governments have struggled with this issue, but this is not progress, with many thousands of residents and leaseholders living in unsafe or unsaleable homes.
We therefore welcome the intention behind the Bill, which seeks to extend protections, impose enforceable duties on freeholders and developers, and give leaseholders meaningful routes to secure remediation when others fail to act. We agree that leaseholders must be protected and the pace of remediation must accelerate dramatically. However, the Bill raises some significant questions.
First, on scope, the Bill applies to any residential building containing one or more leasehold properties, with no minimum height or storey threshold. As we have heard, many speakers have spoken about the benefit of this, but do the Government know how many additional buildings this would bring into scope? Do they have an assessment of the cost implications? Do they have a plan to ensure that the system can cope with the increased caseload?
Secondly, this brings me to enforcement. The Bill substantially expands the powers of the Building Safety Regulator, but the regulator is already under intense pressure over significant backlogs and regulatory delays. I think we should say that, under the stewardship of the noble Lord, Lord Roe of West Wickham, decision rates are showing signs of improvement and new turnaround targets have been set. But in this context, there is a question as to whether it is wise to increase the regulator’s powers further at this point. Would the Government ensure that the regulator has the capacity to administer the expanded responsibilities the Bill would create?
Thirdly, on the Government’s own housing targets, Ministers have pledged to build 1.5 million homes in this Parliament, yet only 208,600 net additional properties were delivered last year—a fall from the previous year. On current trends, the Government are on course to miss their target by 400,000 homes. What assessment has been made of the impact of the Bill on housing supply?
Leaseholders should not bear the cost of historic failures that they did not create. The previous Conservative Government established that principle through the Building Safety Act, remediation orders, contribution orders and the responsible actors scheme. Over 50 developers signed the building safety repairs pledge, yet progress has been and remains far too slow, as we have said.
Let us not forget that behind every statistic is a family living with fear, uncertainty and financial strain. These are people unable to sell their homes, facing unaffordable insurance premiums and receiving service charge demands they cannot pay. As I think everybody has said in this Chamber, these are people who have done nothing wrong and done everything right—saved, bought responsibly and invested in their future—only to find themselves trapped by failures they did not cause.
The Bill seeks to address those failures, and we on these Benches support its aims—and, on a personal note, and echoing the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, I really applaud the inclusion of manufacturers for the first time—but, as His Majesty’s Opposition, we will scrutinise its implications carefully and hope that the Government will do the same. I think we can all agree that leaseholders deserve clarity, competence and urgency, not another cycle of delay. We must be sure that this legislation would deliver the protection, accountability and acceleration that has eluded us all for far too long—and, if it is not this legislation, that the Government’s own legislation will properly address the wrongs that the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to put right.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for bringing this Private Member’s Bill to the House on all these important issues, and I thank all those who have contributed for their very thoughtful and sensitive contributions. The tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives, was a profound failure that should never have happened, and we must ensure that the lessons of Grenfell are learned. It is right that all those affected are at the forefront of our thoughts while dealing with the issues before us.
I start by being completely open and honest. I share completely the concerns of noble Lords about the ongoing cladding safety crisis. As we have heard, over 4,000 buildings have been identified as requiring remediation, and too many residents still face uncertainty about their homes and their finances as a result. This crisis continues to leave people stuck in unsuitable homes, while some of those responsible have yet to contribute towards the costs, as we have heard throughout these discussions.
That is why the Government committed in our manifesto to accelerating remediation, making those responsible pay and better protecting leaseholders from costs through the remediation acceleration plan. While the Government share the noble Baroness’s objectives, the question before us is not one of intent but of whether the mechanisms proposed in this Bill are the right means of achieving those objectives. The Government’s position is that they are not.
Some proposals in the Bill could create worse outcomes for people affected. For example, the noble Baroness’s Bill, in Clauses 1 to 5, seeks to prevent leaseholders from contributing towards remediation costs in all circumstances. Although this is an understandable ambition, it risks creating significant legal and practical challenges. A blanket prohibition is likely to give rise to delays due to concerns around property rights, and it risks greater uncertainty over how remediation will be financed. The proposal also overlaps with existing leaseholder protections established by the Building Safety Act 2022, creating uncertainty about how the different statutory schemes interact. So, while the Government share the objective of further protecting leaseholders from costs, we do not believe that the blanket approach is appropriate. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Young, the Government are considering how we can go further to protect leaseholders from current and future building safety issues, particularly groups not covered by existing protections.
There are proposals in the Bill that have already been delivered through changes made since the Grenfell Tower tragedy; for example, we share the noble Baroness’s ambition, proposed in Clause 11, that developers should be strongly incentivised to remediate. The previous Government—full credit to them—introduced the responsible actors scheme in the Building Safety Act, which led 53 developers to sign a contract with the Government to remediate, or to pay to remediate, over 2,600 buildings at a cost to themselves of around £4.2 billion. Any developer that has signed that contract and fails to meet its remediation obligations faces severe commercial consequences.
We are also concerned that Clause 11 could have significant unintended consequences. In practice, it could prevent developers with outstanding remediation liabilities from building new homes until defects have been remediated or funded. As outlined by the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Sanderson, that risks reducing housing supply and undermining the resources available to support remediation itself.
The Government also recognise the proposals to strengthen enforcement in Clauses 7, 8 and 17. We strongly agree with all those who raised the point, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, that construction product manufacturers should play their part in meeting the costs of remediating unsafe buildings where their products have played a part in making buildings unsafe, as highlighted in Clause 12. Although we share these objectives, we do not consider that those approaches would most effectively achieve her desired outcomes.
That brings me to the forthcoming remediation Bill. The Government will seek to address these issues through legislation and wider work within the department, which will happen—in response to the noble Lord, Lord Young—when parliamentary time allows. The objectives of that Bill are fourfold.
First, we will create certainty over which buildings require cladding remediation and the standard to which that remediation must be completed. Secondly, the Bill will give regulators the powers they need to hold blockers to account, ensuring that those responsible for addressing failures do so more quickly. Thirdly, we will strengthen the law so that construction products manufacturers can, as I have said, be held to account and those who have paid for remediation have a clearer route to recover their costs. Finally, the Bill will ensure that all residents have a route for cladding remediation, even where responsible entities fail, disappear or refuse to act. So, while I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for bringing attention to so many important matters, our focus is on delivering solutions through the existing framework and the remediation Bill.
I turn briefly to other points raised. There is enormous concern from across the House about buildings under 11 metres. I want to reassure the House that we have launched new funding, delivered through an extension of the cladding safety scheme, providing access to funding through remediation of unsafe cladding on a number of multi-occupied residential buildings under 11 metres in England. This will be prioritised towards high-risk buildings, focusing on those with the most serious cladding and fire defects.
On leasehold protections, those responsible for historic building safety defects must pay for them. Again, we are very mindful of the regime established by the Building Safety Act and we have to make sure that we strike a careful balance between the rights of all parties. We have to recognise that some freeholders have no connection to the original defects.
On internal defects, all leaseholders can access support for cladding remediation. Most leaseholders cannot be charged for internal building safety defects through their service charge beyond specified annual caps.
Obviously, enormous concern has been expressed about the wider leaseholder system reform. I do not have time to go into that, but it will of course be an issue that we pick up very seriously as we go forward.
I cannot emphasise enough the need for construction products manufacturers’ redress. So far, I do not think there has been a single contribution from that avenue towards the work.
My time is coming to an end. I stress to the noble Baroness—we have had a conversation about this—that we share her ambitions and concerns but we are determined to find the most deliverable way of delivering on the objectives. I am very grateful for the opportunity to begin discussing this with noble Lords. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand that the Government are unable to support the Bill but, respectfully, I look forward to engaging with noble Lords from across the House as we take these important measures forward, particularly when the remediation Bill is published.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank everybody who has spoken in this debate and for the wide—in fact, unanimous—support, certainly in principle if not in practice, from all those who have contributed. In what I have said and in the Bill I have deliberately not pointed the finger of responsibility or blame at any particular Government. That is not what this is about. This is about seeking justice for leaseholders. It is a difficult and complicated issue but in the end, what this House and the Government need to do, with support from across the House, is to finally address the issues in favour of the leaseholders.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, very much for the expertise that he has again shared, including what the then Opposition—now the Government—said at the time about the importance of finally nailing this issue.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for raising an issue that I feel very strongly about: that the manufacturers have so far evaded responsibility. If that does not come through the courts, it has to come through Parliament, and we look forward to seeing whether criminal prosecutions are brought.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that I like being radical. The challenge she made was that if we do this to the building sector, it will not have the capacity to build the new homes that we need. By the way, Devonshire, which she quoted, described the Bill as “powerful”, and that will do. My challenge back is this: take the car industry. Whenever there is a systemic problem—brakes or something—it calls its cars in, deals with it and faces the consequences, which sometimes means billions of pounds, and it does it quickly. When it comes to people’s homes, 10 years on we are still seeking to protect the building industry and others.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for her praise, although I do not think I deserve it, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for pointing out some of the legal issues that are now coming. I am just sorry that the Government and the Opposition have been a bit lukewarm in saying, “Yeah, we agree, but we don’t agree”.
All I want is for this issue to be finally dealt with properly in favour of leaseholders. That is what I want, and I shall continue to raise it in this House.
Creative Education Access Bill [HL]
Friday 11th September 2026
(4 days, 19 hours ago)
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Baroness Featherstone
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, first, let me congratulate the Minister, welcome her to her place and wish her all the very best. This is a gentle start, I hope. This Bill has the support of many organisations, and I give thanks to the Cultural Learning Alliance, the National Society for Education in Art and Design, the National Theatre, the Independent Society of Musicians, Arts and Minds, the Independent Schools Council and the National Education Union, among many others.
For far too long, creative education has been treated as an optional extra in our schools, a luxury to be squeezed in when time and budgets allow. Yet creativity is not just some sort of enrichment activity. It is a fundamental human capacity—one of the defining strengths of the British economy—and by creative education, I mean music, art, drama, dance, creative writing, design, film and digital media, as well as newer areas such as gaming and other forms of creative technology.
These subjects matter in their own right, but they also help children to develop confidence, imagination, communication, collaboration and problem-solving. They give children the chance to make things: to perform, experiment, take risks and find out what they are capable of. For some children, that can be particularly important, because a child who struggles in one part of school life can discover through music, drama, dance, art and design that they are good at something. That discovery can affect how they see themselves and how they approach literally the rest of their lives. In too many schools, creative subjects have come under pressure from crowded timetables, accountability measures, financial constraints, and the misguided view that creativity is a “nice to have”.
There is another hugely important challenge. There is deep inequality in this country, depending on wealth or location, and so often, where there is a creative deficit, families who can pay for music lessons, dance classes, theatre trips, art materials or other opportunities outside school, do—of course they do—or they send their children to private school when that provision is regarded as truly important. But many cannot and for those children, school may be the only place where they get the chance to pick up an instrument, perform, paint, design, write creatively or experience live theatre, dance or music. That is why access matters so much. A child’s opportunity to discover and develop a creative ability should never ever depend on their parents’ income, where they live or which school they happen to attend.
The Cultural Learning Alliance found that almost half of teachers in independent primary schools report more than two and a half hours of art teaching each week, but in state primaries, only 6% do. That gap is totally unacceptable and we must not ignore it. At key stage 3, the overall direction is a loss of curriculum time for creative subjects and that decline is reflected in the teaching workforce. The alliance also found that, while the overall secondary teacher workforce grew by nearly 7% between 2011 and 2023, the number of teachers in expressive arts subjects fell by 27%— I repeat, 27%. In design and technology, the fall was more than half, and in drama more than a fifth. We have to make sure that we have the teachers with the skills and confidence to teach it.
The five hours a week that this Bill proposes at key stages 1 and 2, and four hours at key stage 3, are deliberately ambitious and are intended to give creative education its proper place in the school week, rather than leaving it to compete for whatever time is left over. Of course, I am not suggesting that every school should deliver those hours in exactly the same way. Schools obviously need flexibility, and there will be different ways of providing a strong creative education, but there must be protected space for that.
The Bill also provides for a creative access guarantee, financial assistance, inspection, partnerships with the creative sector and better information about creative careers and apprenticeships. Those wider provisions are important because creative education is not just about what happens in the classroom. We are so very fortunate in this country to have an extraordinary range of theatres, galleries, museums, orchestras, dance companies, film-makers, designers, artists, games companies and other creative organisations. There need to be much stronger links between those organisations and our schools. A visit to the theatre or to a gallery, concert or creative workplace can make an idea real for a child, in a way that classroom teaching alone cannot, and so many children do not come from backgrounds where they can get that any other way.
There is also a powerful economic argument. The creative industries are one of the UK’s major economic successes. The latest government figures show that the creative industries contributed nearly £146 billion to the UK economy in 2024. That is around 5.5% of our total economic output and nearly seven times the contribution of the automotive manufacturing industry. The creative industries grew more than four times as fast as the economy as a whole last year. If this Government are interested in growth, I suggest they do everything my Bill says.
This is already one of Britain’s great economic strengths and, if we want it to remain so, we have to make sure the next generation has the opportunity to develop the creativity and skills on which those industries depend. Young people from every background need to see that creative careers are open to them and have the opportunity to develop the skills that those careers will require.
The case for creative education does not rest on the jobs that it may lead to, because most children who learn music are not going to become musicians, and most who take part in the school play will not become actors—although I used to do a lot of school plays, and they do say that politics is showbiz for ugly people. Anyway, that is not the point; these subjects are part of a rounded education and have value in their own right. We have even more challenges ahead of us. The world of work is changing quickly, particularly with the development of artificial intelligence and automation, and we do not really know for sure what many jobs are going to look like in 10 or 20 years—if we are alive. If no one understood that reference, it is the prediction that there is a 10% chance AI will kill us within the next 10 years. Sorry, I assumed that everyone kept up with the news.
Originality, imagination, adaptability and the ability to make connections between different ideas are unlikely to become less important. Indeed, as AI becomes capable of producing words, images, music and ideas in seconds, there is a risk—I would say a likelihood, having read some things that AI has written—that more and more of what we see and hear will begin to look and sound the same. Human originality will be at a premium. I know that the Government recognise many of these concerns, and there is already work under way on the curriculum and on improving access to creative subjects. I welcome that and I particularly welcome the Government’s decision to move away from the dreadful EBacc. I am dovetailing with the Government here.
I very much hope and trust that the Government will see this Bill as being very much in the same territory, and as an opportunity to strengthen what the Government are trying to achieve, but at a younger age. There will be questions, obviously, about the number of hours proposed, resources, inspection and implementation. I am open to those discussions, but obviously, the purpose of a Second Reading is to establish whether the principle of the Bill is one the House supports. I hope that there will be broad agreement on the principle. Creative education should have a secure place in our schools, and every child should have the opportunity to discover what they can do. I beg to move.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on her Bill and the way she opened this Second Reading. I also welcome my noble friend the Minister to her place. I look forward to her maiden speech today and to working with her.
Last week we had a debate on the Government’s priorities. I focused on creative education and the importance of making changes to improve the uptake of music in our state schools. Our Labour Government inherited an education system in which the EBacc had squeezed music education and other arts education from the curriculum. In music this damaged both music teacher recruitment and retention and contributed to declining GCSE and A-level entries. Recruitment targets for music teacher training were missed for 11 out of 12 years, and the number of music teachers fell by 850 between 2011 and 2023. A-level music remains in crisis. Entries have fallen by 41% since 2013 to a record low of 4,635 students, while GCSE music entries are around 27% lower than they were in 2010.
As the noble Baroness said in her opening speech, this decline has not affected all young people equally. Music has one of the largest disadvantage attainment gaps of any subject. Schools in the most deprived fifth of local authorities are more likely to have no entries in some arts GCSEs. Some 54% of state schools in those areas have no GCSE music entries, compared with 21% in the least deprived authorities. I thank Professor Adam Whittaker of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Dr Anthony Anderson of Birmingham City University for the research they do on disadvantage-related attainment gaps in music education, and for providing briefings on it. Their work found that, in 18 local authorities, either only one school offers a music qualification—A-level or vocational—or, in the worst cases, none do. The list of authorities includes Knowsley, Hartlepool, South Tyneside, Rochdale, Salford and Tameside, as well as four London boroughs. As a former Salford MP, it breaks my heart to see the Salford local authority included in that list.
The Social Mobility Commission found that children from poorer backgrounds are three times less likely to learn an instrument, sing in a choir or play in an orchestra. Recently, I attended an event hosted by the excellent Royal Philharmonic Society, where three of our most gifted young musicians, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ben Goldscheider and Jess Gillam, discussed the state of music education. These musicians were worried that music education is not in a great place and said that “it’s not what it was”. Like many musicians, they do what they can to support music in our schools, but they cannot solve these issues as individuals. It falls to us in this place to create a better future for both arts and music education in our state schools.
The United Kingdom’s music industry is one of our greatest success stories: it generates £8 billion for the economy and supports 220,000 jobs. Every performer, composer, producer, sound engineer, technician and educator begins somewhere. If we weaken music education, and arts education more broadly, we weaken the talent pipeline that feeds our universities, conservatoires, orchestras and creative industries.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to removing the EBacc performance measure, but removing a barrier is only the first step. We must rebuild the music teacher workforce, restore effective teacher training incentives, such as the bursary, expand access to instrumental tuition and ensure that children in disadvantaged communities have the same opportunities as those elsewhere. Music education is about far more than producing professional musicians; it helps young people to develop creativity, confidence, resilience and collaboration. My hope is that we can create an education system where every child and young person, whatever their background, has the chance to choose music and benefit from all that it offers.
Today’s Second Reading debate brings a welcome focus to the subject of creative education and the issues and challenges of restoring it after the damage done in recent years. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for enabling that focus through the Bill.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood. I note that a DCMS Minister is answering an education debate; I hope that is a sign that joined-up thinking is finally going to be a thing. I very much support every part of the Bill and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on introducing it. Arts education in schools is important on many levels. The arts are an integral component of a democratic society, and it is the right of young people—indeed, a UN right of the child—to have both access to the arts and an opportunity to engage with them at an early age.
We talk a lot about literacy—conventional, digital and even financial literacy—but less about cultural, visual or aural literacy. Within that context, I will make a particular point about neurodivergent students. There are estimates that up to a third of NEETs, or even more, have some form of neurodivergence. The question must arise: if we know there is a connection between creativity and neurodivergent conditions, how much is the decline of creative education in schools and the lack of opportunities responsible, at least in part, for the high numbers of NEETs? I am not convinced that putting a lot of these young people into retail is necessarily the right long-term answer.
Research into these areas is sparse, though what there is points in a certain direction. Might the Government consider commissioning research into this whole area, which would be of help to both education and employment? One thing that many would want to change is the negative perception of those with neurodivergent conditions. What is a negative is the narrow belief that the academic route should necessarily represent the gold standard or the only approach to education.
The major problem that creative education in schools currently has is the structural deficit from so many years of a decline that is still continuing, despite the removal of the EBacc. As Arts and Minds points out, GCSE entries to creative subjects are down by 47% since 2010. In many schools, there is now an institutionalised bias away from the arts that needs to be reversed; that will be difficult. This Bill puts the hours in place, but there is also the shortage of specialist art teachers, including in primary schools. We need, as has been said, to bring back ITT bursaries for art subjects, and in a big way. The reference point should be not the last year but 2010, since when there has been a huge loss in arts teachers. Much more money must be spent on arts in schools, so that we get back musical instruments, art materials and studios. The Bill says “may”, but it ought to be “must”.
School libraries are also important. Books are not just about the written word—they include art books. As Julia Donaldson pointed out at the Publishers Association reception on Tuesday, we also need school librarians to point students in the right direction. Rightly, the Bill encourages partnerships with theatres, museums, galleries and established artists.
In my Question on Monday, on the 100% cuts to the Government’s day-to-day funding of higher education creative courses, my noble friend Lord Hampton made the pertinent point that if we start losing graduates in the creative industries, where will the next generation of specialist school teachers come from? We would not, of course, expect everyone who has a creative education to have a creative career, as the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, said, but those opportunities should be there from the outset. What affects HE will feed back into schools, just as what happens in schools will determine the demand for the arts in higher education. We can have either a virtuous circle or a destructive cycle. What surely is required is an overall strategy for creative education that looks closely at the effect of such decision-making across the whole education ecosystem, including the excellent recommendations that the Bill makes.
Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and I congratulate my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on this important Private Member’s Bill, which, as we know, would enable access to creative and cultural education in state-funded schools. I will return to this a little later. I also pay tribute to and welcome my noble friend Lady Mackenzie. She is someone I have known for many years, and her work and commitment to the arts goes back decades. She has encouraged bold, inclusive work that has pulled in creators and audiences. I remember my own experience when she helped to give birth to the remarkable work by Phelim McDermott and his company at Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1990s. We are indeed fortunate to have her in the House, and I look forward to her maiden speech.
This Bill is crucial, and I hope that the Government will have the good sense to adopt it. I argue this from a personal perspective: there can be no greater start in life than access to the arts and the creative industries. At the age of 11, I was written off because I failed my 11-plus, an exam I did not even know I was taking, and I was shunted off, as with so many others, to a secondary modern education. I was in a place where I felt I just did not belong. It was painful, and I became a rebel—but thankfully, due to my mimicry and my sense of mischief, which I have not lost, I came to the attention of the drama teacher and my life changed. I was no longer the rebel; I had an outlet for my imagination and my energy. There, behind that tatty, faded red curtain in the assembly hall of Cardinal Griffin School in Poplar, east London, I discovered another world that I did not know existed, and it was a world that I did not want to end.
It lifted me from the pain and the confusion that was around me, and it gave me options that I had never dreamed of. Access to these classes literally changed my life. I was discovered in the school show impersonating Eartha Kitt and Bud Flanagan—the outrageous and the sublime. A talent scout spotted me, and I ended up starring in “Oliver!” in the West End of London at the age of 12. My life changed.
But my arts education could not be maintained in the school. I went to an art school and learned in detail about the English language, drama, dance, ballet, music, elocution and improvisation. Improvisation sets the mind free. The mind is like a parachute; it works best when it is open. Creative access ignites the imagination and enables us to imagine and to enter other worlds. It gives us the ability to stand in the shoes of others, and we are all the better for it.
As your Lordships have probably gathered, I am passionate about this issue because an arts education and access to the arts are not luxuries; they are essential to the way we live and engage with others, and particularly to how we engage with the unknown. An active imagination and learning and using language skills and confidence skills are the necessary skills for life and lifelong learning. They give us the ability to actively listen—only then can we properly engage. These life skills will outlive artificial intelligence.
Finally, the other essential part of an arts-based creative education is recognising that there is no such thing as failure. All too often in politics, I hear from one Dispatch Box or the other how it is problematic to bring about a suggested solution, and so there is withdrawal. I entered politics to solve problems, not to create them or just talk about them. Maybe, just maybe, if more of us were more willing to work together cross-party and not be terrified of failure, and if we sought solutions instead of highlighting problems, politics might be seen in a much more positive way.
I cannot welcome this Private Member’s Bill more passionately, because it has the ability to change young people’s lives and change them for the better.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for bringing forward this Bill. I look forward to the maiden speech from the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood. I will do my best to follow the marvellous speech from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman.
I declare my interest as chair of the Teaching Commission, established now for two years, consisting of teachers, leaders and policy specialists, with representatives from unions and the Chartered College of Teaching. I was also, in a previous incarnation, General Secretary of the National Education Union, which has run a fantastic “Arts and Minds” campaign to promote education in the creative arts for all children of all backgrounds.
The Teaching Commission’s second report, published in July, is titled Curriculum and Assessment for All?—there is a question mark at the end. The report examines the required conditions to successfully implement the new national curriculum in 2028. Commissioners welcome the ambition and vision of the 2028 curriculum. It signals a fundamental shift towards a more physical, practical, social and developmental experience of schooling for children and young people, along with a focus on inclusion, belonging and joy for all pupils.
The commissioners, along with many others, strongly welcome the significant broadening of the taught curriculum and, in particular, the revitalising of arts subjects with a requirement for breadth and more depth in detailed programmes of study in the foundation subjects of art, drama and music. Very welcome, too, is the establishment of a new national centre for arts and music education, which will promote arts education and enable high-quality teaching through a teacher development offer. These are all excellent developments to achieve the Government’s ambition to enable all children and young people to gain access to the creative arts as part of their education.
However, there are challenges which must be addressed and recognised. The broadening of the school curriculum to incorporate a much greater focus on creative subjects must also take into account the challenges that schools currently face, and will face more acutely in the near future, in employing teachers who are qualified and expert in the teaching of those subjects. In this respect, creative subjects face a particular challenge. Since 2010 and after the introduction of the EBacc accountability measure, arts subjects have seen a precipitous 42% decline in applications for initial teacher training, reflecting a trend where more than 40% of English state schools are no longer entering any pupils in music and drama GCSEs. These teachers have been lost from the system and the training pipeline has dried up. The Key Group conducted a small survey of secondary school leaders for the commission which revealed that 40% of secondary school respondents reported that that they would have difficulty offering a wider offer in art because of a lack of specialist subject staff. For drama, 40% of secondary respondents reported a lack of specialist drama teachers, and 45% reported that for music.
It is also the unfortunate truth that the teacher supply challenges are not evenly spread across the education system. Schools serving the most disadvantaged communities find it much more difficult than those serving affluent pupil intakes to recruit and retain teachers across the curriculum. The issue of the teacher quality gap is the subject of an Education Policy Institute 2025 report, Closing the Workforce Quality Gap, which reveals that teachers in disadvantaged schools are increasingly less likely to have a relevant degree, with disadvantaged schools now trailing affluent schools by 15 percentage points in the percentage of lessons taught by a subject specialist. Good teacher supply is essential not only to match the increased demands of a broader curriculum; it is also a social justice issue, so that the most deprived pupils have as much chance of being taught by teachers qualified in the subjects they are teaching as their more advantaged peers.
If the broadening subject base of the 2028 curriculum is to be well taught by qualified teachers, a new approach to initial teacher training recruitment targets must be developed by the DfE, which should take account of previous declines in applications and reductions in initial teacher training targets for arts subjects and the number of teachers teaching outside the subject area for which they are qualified. Ultimately, no education system exceeds the quality of its workforce. Broadening the curriculum requires considerable analysis and planning so that it can be successfully implemented, and I urge the Government to note the second Teaching Commission report and to respond to the issues and challenges in it.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I too welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie. I am really looking forward to the teach-ins that she can give us on these subjects. My starting point is that education should form the basis for a fulfilled life, not just passing exams. This is not something on which I expect any disagreement from noble Lords.
I want to talk about two forms of creativity. Quite a long time ago, I was lucky enough to have the Industry and Parliament Trust arrange a creative industries fellowship for me—rather a grand term for the experience that I got just talking to a range of people and observing things. It included contact with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s education department, and I visited a couple of schools to observe their approach to teaching Shakespeare. At one secondary school, a class of 12 year-olds was studying “King Lear”, which might sound a bit unlikely. It involved a lot of physical interpretation, and noble Lords may imagine how this lent itself to the issue of sibling rivalry, for instance. I was told—and this picks up a comment made by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty—that, for “the most challenging child in the school”, which was how they described her, this class worked wonders. She threw herself into it. The class was observed by teachers of other subjects who were enthusiastic about using similar ideas and techniques themselves.
For many years, I was a trustee of the Rose Theatre in Kingston—for far too long; one should keep moving on for the good of the organisation. I managed to leave the board only by organising the recruitment of new directors. I am sure this is an experience other noble Lords have had. We had a lot of applications, and I had not expected so many from the parents of children who were or had been members of the Rose’s youth theatre. Many of them referred to how much that experience widened the child’s horizons and made working in a team more doable, and, in particular, how their confidence had been boosted—not just in specific activities such as creating sets, making props, speaking in front of other people and even improvisation, but overall and in all situations.
To take another activity, art—a lot falls under that heading; my noble friend referred to the “expressive arts”, which I had not heard before, but it is a very useful term—my experience has been that creating something occupies a different part of the brain from academic work. The creativity one can discover within oneself is tremendously rewarding, even if nobody else can identify it when you produce something. Quite apart from making marks on paper, it prompts curiosity and expands your ways of looking at the world and seeing. All this is very self-indulgent, but I am convinced that the impact of creative education can last a lifetime. I am ashamed to say that all that Latin and Greek, for me, did not.
In this very narrow speech, I have not attempted to address the range of issues from other noble Lords, but as the years have gone on, the more keenly I have appreciated the creative activities I have been able to experience. I congratulate my noble friend.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for bringing this Bill. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood, to her position in the Government. I declare my interests as a former schools and colleges governor; I was also for 10 years vice-president of the British Board of Film Classification and was chancellor of Bournemouth University, which has a centre of excellence in film and performing arts.
I was born and raised in a place which I think most people regard as paradise or utopia. It is called Birmingham, just off the M6 by the gasworks. I went to a grammar school which was known for its academic standing, but there was one fellow pupil who I recall seemed to have a rather unusual ambition. He spoke of his intention to read architecture at university—a perfectly laudable goal—but he also mentioned his real passion was to become an actor. I remember thinking that he would struggle, because there seemed no obvious pathway to achieving that at school. But he obviously did find a way, because Anton Lesser went on to star in Hollywood films including “Pirates of the Caribbean”, TV series such as “Game of Thrones” and numerous Shakespearean roles. I am sure Anton would have been an excellent architect, but it is arguable that his career as an actor has inspired an even wider circle.
There is someone else from my home city paradise of Birmingham who did not find a pathway into the creative arts until long after his formal education had finished. The youngest of seven children from a very humble background, his first big break was to write radio commercials for an advertising agency. He is now better known for creating the hit BBC TV series “Peaky Blinders” and is writing the script for the next James Bond film. He is none other than Steven Knight CBE.
Anton Lesser and Steven Knight were not overnight success stories. They had to find a way, where there seemed no way, in their formal education at school. It makes me wonder how many other Anton Lessers or Steven Knights—male and female—are out there who we have missed out on. It matters when you consider that the creative industries contribute £145.8 billion to the UK economy.
It also matters when you consider that we are going through a fourth industrial revolution. We have had steam, electricity, computers and now AI. We all know that artificial intelligence is bringing with it amazing benefits, especially in the health sector, but it also presents challenges, even dangers. Scientists speak of the left side of our brains supporting logical and analytical skills, while the right side supports our more creative and emotional thoughts. AI is a tool that is increasingly doing the left-side factual work for us, including for our children with their schoolwork. This is why it is all the more important for our creative skills to be protected and nurtured. After all, each of us has AI—that is, actual intelligence.
During my time as a film regulator, we on the BBFC board noticed that the number of actors coming from the public school sector grew while the number from less privileged state school backgrounds decreased. The situation is even worse for Black actors. Only 15 Black actors have played two or more lead roles in British films over the last 10 years. After school, Idris Elba, now Sir Idris Elba, did find a way, but that was working as a tyre fitter before a Prince’s Trust grant enabled him to enrol at the National Youth Music Theatre.
Over the years, I have been privileged to host a number of charitable events at which pupils from the BRIT School have performed, singing and playing instruments, but not every pupil who has artistic talents can enrol at the specialist BRIT School. Last March, the Government announced plans to create a national centre for arts and music education. The centre is due to launch this month, so can the Minister say what progress is being made on this? In March of this year, the Government Whip, the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, stated the Government were “not yet clear” on whether a joint fund will be created to support arts activities in schools. The idea was that the Department for Education, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England would work together with donors, trusts and foundations to achieve this. Please can the Minister also give us an update on that plan?
For this Bill to be effective, it will need financial backing. Britain has a strong and historic tradition of wealthy people giving back to society in various ways. This is why it is sad that the billionaire Christopher Rokos is the latest wealthy donor to leave the UK. I wish this Bill success. As a Private Member’s Bill, perhaps it has limited chances of that, but, as the saying goes, those who say it cannot be done should not try to stop those who are doing it.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I am so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for introducing this Bill and doing so with such passion. Her commitment to this issue is incredibly impressive. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood, and am looking forward to hearing her maiden speech. Her commitment to this cause and to theatre generally cannot be in doubt.
This issue is crucial to the country. I know we all want the best for our children. The younger generation deserve the best possible start in life. We do not want them to end up as NEETs. That is punishing for them, and it is not great for the country, as we know. As others have already pointed out, a more rounded education could stop another generation falling into that trap. The need for this Bill is pressing.
However, we should not overlook that it is important for children to have the best possible grounding in a broad education, so I was glad to see the figures this week from PISA, the Progression for International Student Assessment. It appears that there are some benefits to the education that we have been giving our children and that performance in traditional subjects has improved, particularly in science. But it is not enough. If these children are going to grow into rounded human beings and be able to put that classical benefit to use, they need a much broader education.
We have heard about the expense that this new education approach has already taken to teachers from the arts. The numbers are staggering. We need to address that, and the Bill is a great step towards that. If, as the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, suggested, we survive that 10% risk of being obliterated by AI—let us hope—then we can make the most of the new technology. In order to use it positively, the next generation will need to have the broad approach that a creative education can provide. It will become a tool that will need to be used creatively.
The private sector already recognises exactly how important creative skills are. Children who already have the benefit that generally takes them to those schools get the increased benefit of a broad opportunity to experience and take part in the creative arts. We all know that an increasing, really worrying number of the people who are making it to drama school come from what can only be termed a privileged background.
I normally shy away from demanding legislation— I do not want to see money that the country does not have being squandered—but the amount of money that would be required to implement this Bill is tiny, and the benefits would be huge. Looking at what has been achieved so far, there is a genuine case for legislation.
The concept of creative education is incredibly broad. We know its importance. We need to equip our youngsters to bring design and technology skills to industry. If the Government’s vision of a reindustrialised country is to be realised, it will be very different to the old-style industry. Its success will depend on brilliant design, high standards of finish and slick marketing. Maths and science will play their part, but it is the creative skills that will be important.
Look at the importance of tourism to this industry. If the tourist levy is to succeed, we need to bring in a constant flow of visitors to this country. Our arts institutions already do that, but the importance of festivals is huge. Look at what goes on in France—there are festivals for everything, and people flock in. If we have a creative country, new festivals can start here. We need music, art and theatre, which will build confidence, as others have said. My experience is that arts organisations want to engage with schools, but sometimes it is difficult. We can make it easier for them.
My final point is that if outreach is to be successful, what about reaching out to our communities? If schools put on performances, they can invite in all the people who live locally who support their work. It will build communities and relationships. We may not really enjoy listening to too many five year-olds playing the recorder, but some people will.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)
My Lords, I join others in thanking my noble friend for initiating the Bill. I know and appreciate her dedication to and belief in the cultural and creative sector. She is creative in every way.
I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie. I first came across her in 2012, the doughty champion of what turned out to be the magnificent Cultural Olympiad—which was largely down to her, I think.
My noble friend said her speech was narrow, but I thought it was inspirational, alongside the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. I am afraid that I am going to be narrow, because mine is much more political.
We on these Benches wholeheartedly support the Secretary of State Lisa Nandy’s desire to unleash the power of our creative industries, but for this to happen, there needs to be universal access to creative education. This Government, as so many have said, inherited years of decline in the numbers of students taking GCSE and A-level arts-related subjects, as well as the number of teachers who can teach them. So we very much welcome the curriculum review and its acceptance that the EBacc must go, and I join my noble friend in applauding its abandonment. Is the STEAM/STEM argument finally won?
It is not totally clear that the Government fully understand how to achieve their laudable aims. My noble friend does. In her Bill, she has laid out a clear course of action; it gives impetus and direction, and I hope the Minister agrees. As we have heard, the Bill requires state schools to increase their hours of creative education per week. Also, schools must be transparent about what is being taught, and Ofsted must consider the breadth and quality. We on these Benches have long believed that Ofsted inspections should give top ratings only to schools that can demonstrate excellence in creative teaching as well as in other subjects. The measures in the Bill follow recommendations from the CLA, which argues that the teaching of creative subjects should be an essential and equal part of a broad and balanced curriculum, rather than “an optional extra”.
Noble Lords may have noticed that Prince George started secondary school last week. What does Eton offer him? Extensive opportunities across cultural and creative disciplines, with the seamless integration of these subjects into its formal academic curriculum. That is what my noble friend Lady Featherstone is seeking for all our children. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said, it should not be the preserve of those whose parents can afford to pay.
Crucially, the Bill also requires that schools include careers advice on the creative industries. In recent Cambridge University research, many young people described being
“steered away from creative subjects by teachers and parents … and being told that creative careers were risky or not for them”.
It found that students’ economic background impacted on their likelihood of choosing the arts. This feeds into the lack of diversity from which the sector suffers.
The Bill also requires collaboration between schools and the arts sector, with the Secretary of State’s help to enable this—a creative access guarantee, as my noble friend calls it. The recent ACE report from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, suggested exactly this, saying:
“The Department for Education, Department for Culture, Media & Sport and Arts Council England should consider working together on a specific project with philanthropists, trusts and foundations to create a joint fund that would support improvements to the cultural offer in schools. This … could contribute to the cost of training and paying for specialist teachers, and transport costs to visit theatres or museums”.
Can the Minister say whether this advice will be followed?
Lastly, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me bring in the BBC. Every teacher and parent will tell you of the value that it supplies through Bitesize, teacher support packs, arts and music archives, and many other things. Does the Minister not agree that a well-resourced and supported BBC is essential?
This Bill provides a legislative framework of action. Much of what it says is contained in a recent UAL report. Who was its recent vice-chancellor? James Purnell. I hope that he is listening to this debate, but, most importantly, I hope that the Government will support my noble friend’s Bill.
Lord Doyle (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in support of the Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, which would ensure that all our children can benefit from a creative education. The Bill puts a deliberately ambitious proposition before us: that creative education should be an entitlement, not an optional extra, including a minimum expectation for creative learning and stronger partnerships between schools and the creative sector.
It is also a great pleasure to welcome my noble friend Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood to the Front Bench. She brings to the House immense experience from a range of cultural leadership roles, as we have heard, not least from her role in the Cultural Olympiad. We are very lucky to have her. Indeed, having worked with her when we were both special advisers in the Blair Government, I know that I can confidently praise what will be an impressive maiden speech ahead of her actually making it later on in this debate.
We are all here today because of our passion for the arts and the creative industries, and because we know that access to the opportunities that the arts provide is all too often determined by class, geography and money. There are welcome initiatives that are happening today to try to make up for this. James Graham, one of our great playwrights, is doing phenomenal work to try to bring more schoolchildren into theatre productions, and theatres are doing great work; for example, the Royal Shakespeare Company is working with Harriet Walter at the moment to take theatre into schools.
I was lucky to be at a state school at a time when I could benefit from a great arts education, both in core hours and with after-school clubs. Playing the trumpet brought me great joy, even if the same might not have always been true for my audience.
Sadly, under the previous Government, the arts were completely devalued as part of state education. Not only were they excluded from all important performance measures, such as the EBacc and Progress 8 for secondary schools, they were squeezed out of the primary school day. This Labour Government are committed to delivering a curriculum that is rich, broad, inclusive and innovative, with creative subjects studied for both their intrinsic value and their ability to build confidence in essential skills, such as critical thinking, oracy, creative problem-solving and teamwork.
I will give just one example of the benefits. The Cultural Policy Unit, whose work in this area I commend, has written about the “superpower of looking”—that is, getting children to look at paintings and develop their critical thinking skills. At a time when children will increasingly encounter AI-generated images and information, the ability to look closely, interrogate what they see and exercise independent judgment is becoming an increasingly important skill. This shows how creative education is fundamentally civic education. You will find it harder to participate in democratic life and society more widely when you lack the skills that a creative education provides.
To that end, I very much welcome the creation by the Government of the National Centre for Arts and Music Education. It has a mandate to provide national leadership on arts education, a new continuing professional development offer for teachers, and better co-ordination between schools and cultural organisations, promoting routes into creative careers, and taking over oversight of music hubs from 2027. The centre was due to start this month, as already been mentioned in the debate. Can my noble friend the Minister update the House on how this is progressing, who the delivery partner is and when we will be able to see a detailed plan on what it will deliver and when; for example, on the core priorities of creating necessary partnerships between schools and cultural organisations, identifying areas with poor arts provision and preparing schools for the revised curriculum? Concern has been expressed about whether this will genuinely be an arts and music education centre that gives proper weight to drama, dance, art and design alongside music, rather than being led predominantly by its role in overseeing music hubs.
It would be wonderful to think that we do not need to legislate to ensure the level of arts and creative provision we want to see for our children. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister being able to reaffirm the Government’s commitment in that regard. I do not doubt that we have a Prime Minister and a Government who are champions of the creative industries. I hope my noble friend will understand that any anxiety that is being expressed, across the whole House, is because we want to pin down how the honourable intentions are being translated into practice, and that is motivated only by our ambition for our children and our creative industries. I look forward to supporting my noble friend the Minister to deliver on this vital work.
Baroness Gill (Lab)
My Lords, I add my own congratulations to the chorus to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on securing this debate. We are standing at a dangerous crossroads for our children’s imaginations. As we have heard, art, music, drama and dance have been treated as optional subjects for far too long. The principle behind the Bill challenges this head-on, reminding us that every single child, regardless of their background or where they live, deserves a rich and meaningful creative education.
The importance of this principle is not something I need to be persuaded of. I experienced its transformative potential myself as a secondary school pupil. I attended a state school, like many others, in one of the more challenging parts of my neighbourhood. When the school got its first purpose-built music room, announcements were made at an assembly inviting pupils to take up an instrument.
For a young girl who otherwise would have been standing around in a cold playground, that offer was too tempting to resist, and I signed up at once to learn the clarinet. It opened up horizons that I could scarcely have imagined. I soon joined the school orchestra and before too long became part of the small group that our music teacher, Mrs Fellows, took to concerts and even to watch operas at the Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells. Those experiences introduced me to a world well beyond the immediate environment of my neighbourhood and my school. I am still, to this day, enormously grateful to Mrs Fellows, and to Mr Baldwin, my English teacher, who both played an important part in shaping my education and, ultimately, much of what I have achieved in life.
My experience is a powerful reminder that, as many noble Lords have said, creative education is not an optional extra. It can and does expand a child’s horizons, builds confidence, and opens doors, as I said, to possibilities that might otherwise never be encountered. When we look at our peers on the global stage, we see that embedding culture into education is standard practice for high-performing societies.
Look at South Korea, which built a modern economic superpower by deliberately dedicating nearly 10% of overall school time to creative projects. Look at our European neighbours. Finland seamlessly integrates arts into everyday learning to cultivate flexible, highly capable minds. In Germany, extensive regional networks link cultural institutions directly into the school week, while Austria focuses deeply on multidisciplinary, imagination-led pedagogy.
Yet here in Britain, we are sitting on a goldmine that we are failing to replenish. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, rightly pointed out that our creative industries generate a staggering £125 billion annually for our economy and account for one in every 14 UK jobs. From the sound stages of Pinewood to the West End, British talent is our greatest export, but we cannot expect to remain a global leader if we stop feeding the pipeline. We cannot harvest the crops if we refuse to sow the seeds in our state schools.
It is precisely because I believe so strongly in that principle that I have some reservations about the mechanisms proposed in the Bill. I believe that we need to properly consult the teaching profession, and I do not believe in imposing reforms on a sector which could struggle on the ground. It is important that we do not have top-down statutory mandates without, as we have heard already, consulting on the supply of specialist teachers, the ability to timetable and the resources that are available. I welcome that this Government have already made a clear commitment to improving access to creative education and are actively pursuing wider systemic reforms to the curriculum. Finally, I too welcome my noble friend Lady Mackenzie to her place and look forward to her maiden speech.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Featherstone on winning the ballot—or getting in the top 20. I have every confidence that this Bill will go the distance, because my noble friend has a track record. She fought to make sure that the equal marriage Bill got through Parliament. She brought it to Parliament and made sure that it got through, and I think she will be successful in this as well. I look forward very much to hearing the maiden speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood.
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”.
I did not say that; Albert Einstein did. He went on to say that education should inspire curiosity. For very young children, the best way to learn is through play: at the sand tray or water tray, they can learn to co-operate, share and even discuss; with construction toys, they can learn to assemble and to develop new skills. But, as we get older, it very much becomes fact-based. There is nothing wrong, in my view, with learning facts, but it should also be about asking why and challenging. Education should not be about just regurgitating a whole series of information, but using the facts to understand and think critically.
Of course, in creative education, the approach is for students to use their imagination and critical thinking to develop new ideas and solutions to problems, and to build new thoughts instead of just memorising those facts—core concepts such as divergent thinking, for example. One of my favourite films is “The History Boys”, where these disaffected young lads have a teacher who is a bit of a rebel but who motivates them—by drama, by reading out aloud, and by challenging. Those should be almost the hallmarks of our own education system.
When we think of the cultural side of creative education, we think particularly of the arts. As we know and have heard from virtually every Peer, the Government introduced the infamous EBacc, which specified which suite of subjects should be taken in schools at GCSE. Not one of those subjects, of course, was a creative arts subject—surprisingly, given how much the creative industries earn for the economy—so head teachers and chief executives of multi-academy trusts, under budgetary pressures, or themselves perhaps not realising the value of arts subjects, decided in many schools to reduce the number of creative subjects taught, or to even abandon them completely to save money.
Schools also face the difficulty of getting a qualified teacher in these subjects, whether it be music, dance, drama, or design and technology. The EBacc, as my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter rightly said, wreaked havoc on the creative and performing arts in England. The results are there for us all to see. In music, there is a severe and worsening shortage of teachers. The number of music trainees fell by 51% between 2010 and 2024-25, and, over the decade, the number of entrants to study music dropped by 41%. Arts and design saw qualified teachers drop by 27%. In design and technology, it went from 15,000 teachers to 6,300 teachers, and it is believed to be heading to 4,500 teachers. It is the same picture for drama and dance. There are fewer qualified teachers and fewer students taking GCSEs in the creative arts than ever before—and so, of course, fewer students going to university and fewer graduates going into teaching to create those creative subjects. It is very much a vicious circle created by government.
Of course, the same is not true of the independent sector. The answer from government has been, “Oh, we have created these local various hubs”. I am sure hubs are important—I have to say that I have never been to a hub, so I am talking blind here—but I want every school to be a hub of creative arts.
I want to give noble Lords an example of something that changed my life in terms of the arts. When I was leader of Liverpool City Council—I am sorry to go on about this—we bid to become European Capital of Culture, and we won that bid, but we created a programme called Creative Partnerships, which was to give money directly to communities. One of the grants that was given was actually life-changing for those young students. It was to an 11 to 16 church secondary school in the city centre. There was appalling deprivation in the area, with high levels of anti-social behaviour, truancy and absenteeism.
The boys wanted to make a film—and why not? We gave them a grant with which they employed a film director. The film was produced. I think that it was called “It’s All OK”. The premiere was black tie and red carpet. I went along. The film was okay, but what was important were the skills that they had learned. The teacher was Miss Jones. After the success of that film and the work they collaboratively did together, they said, “We’d like to become teachers ourselves”. It was an 11 to 16 school. “We don’t want to go to an FE college. We want to stay in our community, in our school”. Miss Jones offered to come in on a Saturday morning and teach those lads to do drama and English. Of those boys, three became teachers. Through the arts, through pump-priming, that happened.
I have listened in this debate to so many wise words from colleagues. It is not just about what happens in schools but giving young people right across the board the opportunity in the arts. I developed my passion in the arts by going to the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton and seeing a number of shows, then being taken by my parents to the Playhouse, the country’s oldest rep theatre. I remember seeing Vivien Leigh and being inspired by actors. I used to take my pupils to museums and art galleries. But if you are in a deprived community, how do you do that? How do you afford that? As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, we can bring theatre companies into schools, which is good, but it is not the only way of doing it. We must find ways of providing those opportunities for all children.
Noble Lords have said so many wise words. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said. I too failed my 11-plus, so we have something in common. I agree that art can be life-changing. I love the analogy of the parachute that works best when it is open. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, on the importance of design technology in creating skills. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty—I never know whether it is Earl or Lord these days—is right that in many schools there is now an institutional bias against the arts. We must get back not just arts teaching but all the paraphernalia that goes with it—the equipment, the materials, the kiln for doing pottery, et cetera.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, made the point about the pipeline drying up if we are not careful. That is so important. My noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter raised the BBC, which does fantastic arts programmes, from the Proms to Glastonbury, but my worry is that every time it makes cuts, everybody blames the BBC. It is not the BBC that is making the cuts. We are making the cuts because we are not funding the BBC properly. Can the Government get a move on with this, because it will be death by a thousand cuts if we are not careful.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee was right to talk about the expressive arts and absolutely right that it is not just about passing exams. The noble Baroness, Lady Gill, also talked about learning a musical instrument. She is absolutely right. It can open up new horizons. One oboe can change the world for you.
I end where I started, with my noble friend Lady Featherstone, whose words link to what the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, said. Schools might be the only place where somebody can pick up a musical instrument or perform in a play. Young people from every background deserve the right to have creative art running right through their school.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, for today and today only, I speak from the Front Bench in the place of my noble friend Lady Cash. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on her success in the Private Members’ Bill ballot and I thank all noble Lords for their powerful contributions to this interesting debate. I very warmly welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie, who comes to this House and her new job with years of relevant experience. I join others in looking forward to her maiden speech today and further contributions in the years ahead.
As we have heard, this Bill seeks to mandate a minimum number of hours for creative and cultural education in schools, with five hours weekly for pupils in key stages 1 and 2, and four hours weekly for those in key stage 3. It would also require schools to take steps to ensure that pupils have access to live cultural or creative experiences, to partner with the creative sector and to provide pupils with information regarding creative and cultural careers. On top of that, it would introduce a report on the state of creative and cultural education to be published by the Secretary of State at least once a year.
When school timetables are already very full, there is concern about what schools would have to remove from them in order to accommodate this requirement. I echo the view of my right honourable friend Laura Trott, shadow Education Secretary, who said in relation to the Government’s proposals to change the national curriculum that
“when everything is a priority, nothing is”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/11/25; col. 930.]
The Bill risks adding an unnecessary additional requirement that could put core educational lessons at risk. It is critical to focus on these core educational subjects to give pupils the best possible chance of success. It was this strategy under the previous Government that led to pupils in England rising to fourth for reading—the highest in the western world—as well as 11th in the world for maths. Both positions have risen up the ranks since 2018. These rankings speak for themselves and highlight the progress in improving school standards. Sadly, this improvement does not apply in Scotland or Wales.
To include the mandated hours of creative education, schools would have to sacrifice time spent on the most important subjects. It is crucial that pupils are given the chance to excel at these core subjects, as the skills they provide are essential not only for employment but for the life skills they teach.
On top of that, it is flexibility that enables schools to allocate time across subjects appropriately and as they see fit. Adding further rigidity into the national curriculum does the opposite of trusting teachers to decide how much time is right for this creative education. In fact, this flexibility in the current curriculum was praised in Professor Becky Francis’s Curriculum and Assessment Review by art teachers themselves, who commented that they
“relish the flexibility of the present curriculum across all key stages”.
Indeed, the only changes suggested by the review for key stages 1 to 3 was that the programme of study could
“clarify the knowledge and skills that pupils are expected to develop”.
Again, although “further specificity” was recommended for music programmes, there was no suggestion of mandating a set number of hours. Why, then, if these teachers are not asking for this, would another national curriculum requirement be introduced?
To look at a specific example, the school with the highest Progress 8 score in the country is Michaela, in north London—a school that has held that title for three consecutive years. A successful school is able to have flexibility over its curriculum, showing that best practice should not be to introduce more requirements that forces schools to dilute their curriculum.
Pupils need core skills. Mandating a specific number of hours for creative education is not the best way to do that. The Bill risks diluting the curriculum and drawing focus away from the core subjects taught in schools. Despite the many passionate arguments that we have heard this morning, on this side of the House we cannot support the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Mackenzie of Sherwood) (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for bringing forward this Bill, which raises vital issues on widening access to creative education, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. We have heard a really stimulating and rich discussion this morning, for which I am so grateful.
I am honoured that my first speech in your Lordships’ House should be on such an important topic, which has been a lifelong passion for me. I start by thanking my supporting noble friends Lady Nye and Lady Hunter of Auchenreoch—apologies in advance to my noble friend. I must also thank Garter King of Arms, Black Rod and his team, our excellent doorkeepers, catering staff, the Whips’ Office of the Government, my noble friends on the Front Bench and noble Lords across your Lordships’ House for their generous and kind welcome.
I understand it is customary to introduce myself briefly. My parents, Kenneth Mackenzie and Myrna Blumberg, were South African journalists, writers and activists fighting for the abolition of apartheid. After the massacre at Sharpeville, when a state of emergency was announced, my mother, along with many other activists, was imprisoned without charge or trial. As a journalist, she was luckier than many others, and her newspaper helped secure her release. As a result, we fled to London, where I was brought up. In London, as a child, I spent what felt like every Sunday with my parents protesting in Trafalgar Square outside the South African embassy: I realise that this embedded in me the values of equality and the tenacity needed to make change happen.
My London childhood also gave me access to the outstanding free music education of the Inner London Education Authority, so that I could learn several musical instruments, play and sing in the ILEA choir and orchestra, as well as developing practical creative skills across the arts. As a result, my first job was in a professional touring theatre company, working with young people in youth clubs, community centres, sometimes parks, offering practical theatre and music workshops to young people, intensive residencies, and performances. Our principle was that young people decided what skills they wanted to learn, the subjects they wanted to tackle, and our job was to serve them and provide the training and support they needed. We were led by the young people, the specific priorities they had in their local communities, and their ambitions.
This place-based, community-led approach guided me throughout my career, running theatres, cultural organisations and festivals in Bradford, Nottingham, Glasgow, Chichester, Manchester, London, Amsterdam, Paris and, most recently, Adelaide, South Australia. Please do not panic, your Lordships—I will mention only two places in my career which were particularly crucial for my creative education. Nottingham Playhouse was the first large theatre I led, supported by outstanding leadership from the City of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Education Authority, who encouraged us to become a teaching theatre, like a teaching hospital, where we not only had a dedicated theatre company working in every school, offering creative skills workshops and performances, but where we also set up two full-time, two-year courses for age 16-plus and 18-plus young people to develop their theatre skills and creative talents.
The communities of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire pushed us to work with them on an ambitious programme of world-class international theatre and dance, encouraging international stars from around the world, established and emerging UK artists and, above all, local talent. I lived in Sherwood at the time, and I celebrate my time in Nottingham through the name I have taken in your Lordships’ House.
My recent work in South Australia gave me the chance to work extensively with brilliant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and communities, including the Nharrangha artistic leader Jacob Boehme, his creative team and, above all, his elders, on a large-scale creation. This was based on the stories in their 65,000-year continuous cultural history and on the country in which they lived and worked. It opened at the Adelaide International Festival, and it is still touring internationally. My understanding of how place shapes culture and creative education, how innovation springs from deep roots in your community and the land on which you live, has been transformed by these artists and these elders, who, exceptionally and generously, made me an honorary elder. I feel confident I am the only person in this noble House who can say that.
The Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, includes a vision of creative partnerships to support young people to develop their creative skills, with the support of their local arts and cultural organisations—from libraries to museums, from music venues to youth centres.
Our Prime Minister is challenging us to achieve growth in every postcode. Our ambition is to activate in every postcode the creative partners to support young people, to find their talent, to develop their skills and to contribute to the growth of our creative industries.
The UK’s creative industries, as many of my noble colleagues have mentioned already, are in the top eight priorities of the UK industrial strategy. We have heard many figures for what they contribute; mine is £145.8 billion in GVA to the UK economy in 2024. However, as we have heard, opportunities are currently unequally distributed across postcodes and across socioeconomic groups. In 2024, 55% of the creative workforce was from an advantaged background, compared to 45% for the economy as a whole. Post-16, economically disadvantaged students are less likely to choose creative paths, as we have heard, and the underrepresentation of students from lower socioeconomic and culturally diverse backgrounds continues at higher education level.
Starting with the power of place, the strength of communities in each postcode, the advantages of growing up in the place you know with the support to experiment, innovate and risk—which, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, is one of the key elements in the process of creation—is, for me, a vision that can allow our next generation of creative workers and creative start-ups to flourish in every postcode.
The Government are committed to effective place-based delivery of creative opportunities for all young people, building growth in every postcode, supported by partners at regional and national level. Some important starting points at national level, many of which have been referred to today, include revitalising arts education through our new curriculum; scrapping the EBacc performance measures; removing unnecessary constraints on subject choice for young people; launching a new national centre for arts and music education; publishing the new enrichment framework for schools and colleges; and investing £132.5 million of dormant asset funding through the Every Child Can programme to increase young people’s access to enrichment opportunities.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for allowing me to play a small part in the presentation of her Bill. While I must express reservations about the Bill on behalf of the Government, I hope I have outlined that we share the values and the intention behind it, and that we are working to ensure that the Government deliver better creative education for all our young people. I join the noble Baroness in her commitment to empowering our young people to lead the future of creative growth in every postcode.
I hope that I have covered in my speech many of the points noble Lords have raised. I have just a few other points to refer to, and if I leave anyone out then I hope noble Lords will excuse me. I will be very happy later on to pick up anything I omit.
The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, raised an important point about neurodivergent students and the need for research. That is something I would like to reflect on and take up with colleagues in government.
I wish to make a quick point about the wonderful contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. When he kindly referred to Nottingham Playhouse and his time working with me and with Phelim McDermott, he omitted to say that he was performing Mephistopheles in “Doctor Faustus”. Of course he cannot say, but I can, that he was absolutely outstanding. To pick up on the serious point the noble Lord made about failure, I refer him to the famous line of Samuel Beckett: “Fail again, fail better”.
I make the point to the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, that I will commit to reading the Teaching Commission’s report, Curriculum and Assessment for All? I was very interested in those points and would like to follow them up—once I know what I am talking about. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lord Doyle, that the national centre for arts and education will be launched later this year, and we will all know more at that point.
I would also like to refer to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, made in paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Hodge for the excellent and outstanding work she has done on the Hodge report for the Arts Council. As many of your Lordships know, we have accepted and welcomed the Hodge report and its recommendations. We, alongside colleagues in the Department for Education, where I will be having a meeting next week, and with the Arts Council, are now working through the many excellent ideas that she has proposed.
I finish by picking up a couple of general points, in particular a point the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, raised, but which several other noble colleagues also referred to: AI and how it poses both dangers and opportunities. It is, of course, a topic whose dangers and opportunities this House is debating under many headings; but I stress that, for all of us who believe in the power of art and our artists and creators, as in many areas, many of them are doing exceptional work themselves. They are using and adapting AI, finding ways to make it a force for good. Without being over-optimistic about the 90% chance that we are not eliminated by AI, I suggest that we put our faith—as we should always—in the creativity of our creative industries and artistic sectors, and hope that they will help us to continue to have life-changing moments in a positive sense, as so many of your Lordships have referred to in relation to this topic.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, I really think that that was a marvellous maiden speech. The Minister has a most exquisite voice as well, which gives her a bit of an advantage. I know that she is on our side on this. Given that my noble friend on the Front Bench mentioned that I was the originator and architect of the same-sex marriage law when I was a junior Minister—the only Lib Dem, surrounded by Conservative Ministers, when I got the idea of doing that—and now it is the law, I say to the Minister: I want her to be me and push this in her department, and in the education department. I just thought that was marvellous.
I did not feel the same about the Conservative French Bench response, which was incredibly disappointing. I also feel that it is like clinging to a sinking ship if you do not change or move forward, saying that three hours are it for ever. The world is changing; if we do not get with it and prepare for it, then just clinging to the old ways will not enhance our status in the world. We will not remain top of anything if we do not change our ways—and we are having enough trouble as it is.
I thank all noble Lords, because it was a wonderful debate. It was like stirring stories for creatives. If it was left to us in this Chamber the world would be a better place, but sadly there are a few other influences. So we have work to do, but I give thanks to all noble Lords for their wonderful creations. The Creative Education Access Bill is not simply an arts policy; it is a statement about the future well-being of our nation. My heartfelt thanks to all of you.
Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (Restoration of Powers and Responsibilities) Bill [HL]
Friday 11th September 2026
(4 days, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (Restoration of Powers and Responsibilities) Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (Restoration of Powers and Responsibilities) Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, I thank the Minister and his Commons ministerial colleague Jake Richards for the constructive and proactive manner in which they have engaged with me and colleagues on this Bill. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord McNally, a former chair of and tireless advocate for the Youth Justice Board, who had hoped to speak in today’s debate but is, sadly, unwell. We wish him a rapid recovery.
Nearly 30 years ago, the new Labour Government revolutionised the youth justice system and laid the foundations for one of the great public policy successes of our time. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 established a youth justice system with a clear principal aim: preventing offending by children and young people. It created the Youth Justice Board to monitor the system, advise Ministers, promote effective practice and assess whether that aim was being achieved. It provided for youth custody services and commissioning places in the juvenile secure estate to be transferred to the board, which subsequently took place via the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales Order 2000. At the local level, it brought together police, probation, health, education and social services in statutory youth offending teams, creating a co-ordinated response to youth offending on the ground for the first time.
The results have been remarkable. The number of under-18s detained in the secure estate, which peaked at 3,052 in 2003, has fallen to fewer than 400 today. Over the same period, proven offences by young people have fallen by nearly 90%, from more than 268,000 to fewer than 36,000. That is an extraordinary achievement. Yet instead of learning from that success and asking how its lessons might be applied more widely throughout the justice system, we have seen three successive attempts over the past 15 years to abolish, diminish or strip responsibilities from the Youth Justice Board.
The first came in 2011, during the coalition Government, as part of the Treasury’s bonfire of the quangos. At the time, I was chief of staff to the Deputy Prime Minister. I had previously had the privilege of working at the Youth Justice Board under the inspirational leadership of our former colleague, Lord Warner, and I knew how important the board was to the success of the system. Thanks to efforts in government and in Parliament, led by Lord Warner, my noble friend Lord McNally and many others, those proposals were happily defeated.
The second attempt came in 2017, when Liz Truss was Secretary of State for Justice, when responsibility for youth custody operations was transferred to the Youth Custody Service and commissioning functions to the MoJ. Responsibilities explicitly assigned to the YJB in the 2000 order were removed under ministerial instruction, without an amending order being laid then or since.
Now comes the third attempt—and, remarkably, it comes from a Labour Government. Under the Government’s proposals, the board will lose responsibility for national oversight, performance monitoring and the administration of the youth justice core grant. Its future role will largely be confined to identifying good practice and supporting local services in continuous improvement. It will have lost the principal levers through which it has been able to drive improvement across the system. Ministers will lose something equally important: robust, independent advice from a board containing experts with practical experience of youth justice and the levers to drive change.
My Bill takes a different approach: it would restore the powers and responsibilities of the board as broadly envisaged by the Labour Government in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales Order 2000. It also recognises the development of devolution since the board was created. It would require the Secretary of State, the board and the Welsh Government to agree a memorandum of understanding setting out their respective responsibilities for youth justice. It would require consultation with the Welsh Government on board appointments, extend the board’s advisory role to the Welsh Government, and provide for Welsh Government approval of specified grants in Wales.
I do not pretend that the youth justice system is perfect or that there is no room for improvement. The much smaller cohort of children now entering custody often have extraordinarily complex needs, and reoffending remains far too high. There is still plenty that needs to improve, but I am adamant that the changes the Government are proposing would be a major step backwards. What makes their approach particularly difficult to understand is that it runs directly counter to the review of the Youth Justice Board that the Government themselves commissioned from Steve Crocker, a former director of children’s services. His conclusion was clear: changing the board’s current status would be risky, costly and disruptive, with no certainty that its functions would be better delivered inside the MoJ. He warned that splitting these functions across the department would create a system that was
“less agile, more complex, and less transparent”.
He specifically highlighted the importance of technical expertise and an independent voice within youth justice.
What did the Government do with the review they had commissioned? They published it, and, on the very same day, announced a strategy that rejected its central conclusion. Their explanation was that the scale of change required more significant reform than the review recommended, but that is not really an explanation. The scale of change required was precisely what Steve Crocker had been asked to review. John Drew, the former chief executive of the YJB, has identified the danger in the Government’s proposals very clearly, warning that moving youth justice policy and performance monitoring exclusively into the Civil Service will create a greater separation between practical experience and policy-making, increase the likelihood of advice being given by people without experience of the system on which they are advising, and reduce the chance that Ministers will hear dissenting voices. Surely that last point matters. Independent advice is not an inconvenience to good government; it is part of good government.
The other argument advanced for these changes is that democratic accountability somehow requires these functions to be exercised directly by MoJ officials, but that simply does not make sense. The Youth Justice Board is already accountable to Ministers, and, through them, to Parliament. The Secretary of State appoints its chair and board members, and Ministers set the policy and performance framework within which it operates. They approve its strategy and annual business plan, and the board is required to comply with ministerial directions and guidance. The question is not whether the Youth Justice Board is democratically accountable—it plainly is—but whether Ministers use that accountability effectively and set clear objectives, engage with the board and use its expertise to drive improvement across the system.
When I worked at the Youth Justice Board, there was regular engagement between its chair, Norman Warner, and the Home Secretary, first Jack Straw, then David Blunkett, as well as with the Prime Minister. Indeed, the first time I ever stepped over the threshold of No. 10 was to represent the Youth Justice Board in discussions on youth crime. This level of engagement was key to the success of the youth justice reforms. Government understood that the board had an important role in driving systemic change, engaged with it proactively and resourced it properly. I am interested to know from the Minister how many meetings recent Secretaries of State for Justice have held with the chair of the Youth Justice Board specifically to set objectives for youth justice and agree strategies for delivering them.
There is a final question the Government need to answer: why would we take important functions away from an expert board with a proven track record and transfer them into a department already overwhelmed by the crisis in the adult justice system? The reason why the Youth Justice Board was established in the first place is that in the 1990s, when oversight of youth justice was run from the Home Office, it had received little attention. Inevitably, the focus was on adults, as they represent a vastly larger contingent in the criminal justice system. The consequence was an explosion of youth offending and anti-social behaviour, and a collapse in public confidence in the system.
If the Government proceed with their transfer of oversight functions of the youth justice system to the MoJ, the same process will inevitably play out. Youth justice will be relegated to a backwater as the ministry naturally focuses on the adult criminal justice system. In five years’ time, we will be back where we were before the 1998 reforms.
In contrast to the success of the youth justice system in reducing the number of young people in custody and the number of youth offences by nearly 90% over the past 23 years, the adult prison population has risen by around a fifth over the same period, despite crime rates falling. Our prisons are now so overcrowded that people convicted of serious violent offences are being released early. Recalls to prison are at an all-time high—up 28% last year. This is overseen by the department to which Ministers now propose adding responsibility for functions currently exercised by a specialist and highly successful organisation whose very purpose is youth justice. Why? What evidence is there that this will improve outcomes? How will separating policy-making from practical expertise make the system better? Why have the Government rejected the conclusions of the independent review they themselves commissioned? Those questions deserve answers.
If the Government persist with these changes, the Youth Justice Board may survive in name, but in practice it will become little more than a statutory think tank—a pale shadow of the organisation that has played such an important role in one of the great public policy successes of the past 30 years. With all the challenges in our criminal justice system, we cannot afford to dismantle the one part of it which has been an overwhelming success. We cannot and must not go back to the past, when an overwhelmed department neglected youth justice and youth offending spiralled out of control, bringing misery to the lives of so many law-abiding citizens. It is not too late for Ministers to think again. I beg to move.
Lord Rook (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for bringing forward his Private Member’s Bill. I do not want to start on a downer or with a spoiler, but I suspect that the Bill may fail to receive the support of the Government. Either way, this Private Member’s Bill presents a timely opportunity for your Lordships’ House to consider the future of youth justice in our country.
The proposed government reforms are about having clearer accountability, a greater grip on the criminal justice system where young people are concerned and a more localised, more personalised approach and response, with a particular focus on that small group of young people who are most at risk. These are important aims. The question is: how do you realise them? Youth justice is not simply a question of administration; it reveals what the state believes about personal responsibility and, ultimately, humanity. What is our response to children who have experienced and caused real harm? How bright a future can we give to young people who have experienced a darker past than most of us can ever imagine?
Let us be clear: victims deserve protection, truth and justice, communities have a right to safety and no child’s offending should be excused or minimised, for their own sake, let alone that of society. But we cannot build an effective youth justice system on a fiction that children are simply small versions of adults. Many who enter this system have experienced neglect, exclusion, exploitation, severe mental health difficulties, special educational needs, family breakdown and a broken care system. None of this removes their personal responsibility, but it should inform our response and the response of wider society.
Our prison estate, as the noble Lord just mentioned, is under acute pressure and we have to be serious about reducing that systemic stress. To do that, we need to look upstream. Tomorrow’s prisoners are formed today in childhood and adolescence. That was the key insight of the Taylor review, and it led to the innovation of secure schools. Oasis Restore, which is the country’s first secure school, has a different model from most young offender institutes. It is smaller, more relational, educational and therapeutic, but it is still secure. It holds children accountable. It helps young people to understand themselves and their situation. It develops trust. It promotes learning and life skills. It enables young people to imagine a different kind of future.
I was struck by the testimony of one set of parents, whose child was in Oasis Restore. They said that, for the first time, they received adequate healthcare, encouragement into education, and an assessment leading to diagnoses of autism and ADHD. They had staff who really knew them and cared for them. They were able to start taking responsibility for themselves. This is not soft justice; it is demanding justice and transforming justice. However, as Steve Chalke, the founder of Oasis Restore, warns, it is in danger of creating a “therapeutic island” in a punitive sea of policy, compliance, assurance and accountability. We need safeguarding, inspection and accountability, but when assurance frameworks become unyielding, unco-ordinated and unresponsive, paperwork becomes the enemy of real work.
I was really encouraged earlier today by a conversation I had with Kate Green, the Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is responsible for building stronger and safer communities. She gave me an insight to the work the Government are doing with the Greater Manchester local authorities. The honourable Jake Richards in the other place, a Minister in the Ministry of Justice, signed an MoU with Greater Manchester in May that will transform youth justice across the city region. It focuses on prevention and diversion from the criminal justice system. It is underpinned and informed by the voice and experience of young people.
Elements of that include: the Greater Manchester Combined Authority becoming the financial administrator of the Turnaround programme, better data sharing across services, and successful remand fostering programmes, which have radically reduced the number of young people returning into young offender situations. It has a youth justice practice hub, which spreads good learning and good practice. It will tackle the disproportionality in outcomes for children in the system. It is a potential blueprint which we could scale across many parts of the country, and the Government should be encouraged to do so.
In this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Oates, is helping us to address critical questions: how do we protect the public and reduce the number of future victims? How do we hold children responsible without writing them off? How do we ensure that the most at-risk young people receive not just more punishment and control but better education, better assessment and better support? Although the Government may not support this Bill, it makes a vital contribution to the wider debate. I look forward to hearing from noble Lords as we progress this vital and timely conversation in your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Sater (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for bringing this Bill before the House and compliment him on his unwavering defence of the YJB. I will focus my remarks on one particular issue at the heart of the Bill: the Government’s proposed changes to the Youth Justice Board. I share the concern we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, that the proposed changes risk weakening what is demonstrably working. I say that with some personal experience, having seen our youth justice system from two perspectives—first, as a youth magistrate for over 20 years and, secondly, as a former member of the Youth Justice Board.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord McNally for his unrelenting and passionate work in youth justice. I was fortunate enough to serve on the board while he was chair, and I am sorry that he is unable to be here today. I hope he makes a speedy recovery.
The creation of the youth offending teams, supported by the YJB, changed the landscape of youth justice. The YOTs, now referred to as youth justice services, brought together a team locally, including police, probation, health, education, and social care. This gave us a valuable insight into the child, a much more holistic approach to youth justice and, ultimately, better rehabilitation. The evidence shows that this approach has worked. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, has already reminded us of the significant fall in youth offences and youth custody, which is an extraordinary achievement. The YJB has played a hugely important role in supporting that success, and one of its strengths has been bringing together national expertise and independence, with locally delivered multi-agency services alongside its visibility right across the system.
I have often suggested that the adult criminal justice system could learn a great deal from the youth justice approach, and that is not simply my view. Martin Jones, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation, told the Justice Committee earlier this year that in youth justice
“we have all the building blocks of success, and we need to ensure that we carry that across into the adult system”.
For me, that is an endorsement of the value of the youth justice model and, surely, a reason to ask what we can learn from what is working before we weaken the structures that help make it work.
My concern is not with the principle of reform itself: I recognise that organisations often need to evolve and build on their successes. Instead, my apprehension is centred on what we might lose by moving these responsibilities from an independent specialist body, the YJB, into the MoJ, which we know already has a lot on its plate. If the Government believe that reform is needed, surely one of the first questions should be: “What does the YJB need?”, not whether some of it should just be brought back into the MoJ. The question is: how can we expect to retain the YJB’s expertise and the value of its independent advice to Ministers, while at the same time removing some of its responsibilities?
Phil Bowen, the chair of the Youth Justice Board, has made an important point here:
“We have said to ministers that putting end-to-end oversight back into the department means that you do have a different tone—a minister could suggest an idea like reforms to the youth court, and we could provide advice as wise experts rather than as civil servants”.
That distinction is extremely important. I am uneasy about any reform which could be perceived as a move away from a child-first approach towards a justice-first approach.
The Government themselves recognise that children remaining in the youth justice system are often more vulnerable and have more complex needs. Surely that makes specialist expertise more important, not less. As the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has highlighted, these proposed reforms run counter to some of the findings of the government-commissioned review by Steve Crocker. This was an important review, which should be taken seriously into consideration.
Therefore, I ask the Minister: are the Government working on an impact assessment and, if not, will they commit today to doing so? It is imperative that any changes lead to better outcomes for children and young people in youth justice. The combination of local delivery, practical experience, national expertise and the independent advice that follows from that is worth protecting, so my plea to the Government is: reform where reform is needed, but please let us build on what works rather than risk weakening it.
Baroness Murphy (CB)
My Lords, I am no expert on youth justice and I am aware that I am surrounded today by people who are, but I support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Oates, because I have too often experienced the results of a Government thinking that by transferring responsibilities in-house to central government and away from an organisation set up especially to do the job, they will improve matters. They are nearly always wrong. On the contrary, it often makes the organisation more remote, ever looking over its shoulder at the next ministerial edict. It fails to recruit leaders of quality after the first generation has gone and buries those responsible in Civil Service bureaucracy. Ministers, who are usually amateurs in the topic—although not in this House today—are often not there long enough to get to grips with the total responsibilities. Delivery deteriorates as new political priorities take centre stage.
I understand that the pattern of crime has changed; that small group we are left with is really a very difficult group. Maybe the constituent personnel of the Youth Justice Board need to change, but a revamped YJB would likely be more far more effective than further centralisation, which is what we have. It was a mystery to me why the Government would want to transfer responsibilities from a successful organisation such as the Youth Justice Board—even if it has had some blips in its history, as all organisations do—as it has done so much to reduce youth crime. Why would we transfer those responsibilities to a Minister in the MoJ, for example, when the YJB, while challenged, is not actually failing?
The Government seem to have taken no notice of Steve Crocker’s review, which was done only a few months ago. In January this year, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said about its recent report into the Ministry of Justice:
“The criminal justice system remains in crisis, end to end … On legal aid, the reforms of a decade ago are now at serious risk of going down in history as an extinction event for the entitlement to access to legal advice in large parts of the country … The issue of HMP Dartmoor is an absolute disgrace, from top to bottom”.
Again, we all know that what has happened is that the MoJ is leasing it again. It thought it was a sensible thing but that was driven by the need for prison places, never mind that it is actually unusable as a prison. It is a perfect example of a department reaching for a solution—any solution—in a blind panic and under pressure.
Then there are the other problems of the MoJ: severe staff shortages in the Prison and Probation Service, in which a staggering shortfall of personnel means that those left are suffering from exhaustion and low morale; the early release and legislative pressures we have heard so much about recently placing an impossible burden on an already buckling community supervision network—and the Government thought it would be a good idea to add more responsibilities to the MoJ? I just cannot see it myself. It is far better to do the reverse: beef up the Youth Justice Board, increase its powers, think seriously about implementing Steve Crocker’s recommendations, and maybe ask the board itself to make some recommendations about the way forward. It would be useful to scrutinise successful systems in Belgium, Norway and New Zealand on how to improve youth justice.
I support this Private Member’s Bill and wish it success—although without any expectation that the Government will see the light. But I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for introducing the Bill and for giving the House the opportunity to consider, once again, the future of youth justice. The noble Lord’s intentions are entirely understandable, as set out in his opening remarks. We all want a youth justice system that is effective, properly resourced and focused on the welfare of children. We know that many young people who come into contact with the justice system have experienced trauma, exploitation, poor mental health, family instability and other forms of disadvantage. Any successful youth justice system must recognise those realities and respond accordingly.
However, speaking from a Welsh perspective, I am not convinced that the restoration of powers to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales fits the constitutional context in which we now find ourselves. Earlier this year, the UK Government and the Welsh Government published an agreement on youth justice and probation, committing to an expanded and clearly defined role for the Welsh Government. More recently, the White Paper Cutting Youth Crime. Changing Young Lives again pointed towards greater Welsh oversight of aspects of youth justice funding and delivery. The conversation in Wales is therefore increasingly about how responsibility can better align with devolved services and, ultimately, how youth justice itself should be devolved.
The debate is not principally about restoring functions to the English or Welsh bodies, or a model of that kind. From Plaid Cymru’s perspective, the long-term destination remains clear. We believe that justice, including youth justice, should be fully devolved to Wales. The services most closely connected to preventing youth offending and supporting vulnerable children, including education, health and social care, are already devolved, and it is increasingly difficult to justify retaining responsibility for youth justice at Westminster while so many of the services that shape outcomes for children are the responsibility of Welsh public bodies.
The experience in Wales demonstrates the value of that approach. Through the Welsh Youth Justice Blueprint, partners have pursued a child-first, rights-based, trauma-informed model, focused on prevention, diversion and community support. The results are noteworthy. In 2022-23, 667 children in Wales received a caution or sentence, which is equivalent to 2.3 children per 1,000 of the population aged 10 to 17. Although that figure was unchanged from the previous year, it represents a reduction of 74% compared with 2013-14. Those figures suggest that there is real merit in approaches that seek to intervene earlier and, wherever possible, keep children away from the justice system.
Against that backdrop, I would welcome some clarification from the Minister in his response. The Government have indicated that the Welsh Government will assume a stronger role in youth justice and that responsibility for certain funding streams will transfer to Welsh oversight. Can the Minister explain what that means in practice? Which funding streams are proposed for transfer and what proportion of overall youth justice expenditure in Wales do they represent? Will the funding be recurring and protected for the future? More importantly, what additional powers will Welsh Ministers possess as a result? What decisions will they be able to take in April 2027 that they cannot take today? Will they have genuine discretion to set priorities and direct resources according to Welsh needs, or will they simply become responsible for administering the funding determined elsewhere?
The distinction matters because a transfer of administration is not the same as a transfer of authority or accountability. One of the clearest challenges within the system in Wales remains the use of remand. If Wales is to have greater responsibility for youth justice funding, will Welsh Ministers have the flexibility to invest in alternatives to remand and other preventative measures that reflect the child-first principles of the Welsh Youth Justice Blueprint?
For me, the mission should be focused on early intervention and prevention. If Welsh Ministers are expected to play a larger role in youth justice delivery, they should have the ability to establish community alternatives to remand. Therefore, while I welcome the questions that this Bill raises, I remain of the view that the most effective and democratically accountable solution is the full devolution of justice, including youth justice, to Wales. I look forward to the rest of the debate and the Minister’s response.
The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
My Lords, I was encouraged by the Government’s White Paper on youth crime, which highlighted the relationship between complex needs and the experiences of youth justice. However, the increasing prevalence of such needs underscores the necessity of retaining the specialist expertise of the Youth Justice Board.
In my own diocese, I have seen how those needs can draw children into crime; for example, through county lines. Many young people who come into contact with these networks are not simply offenders but often victims of exploitation and trauma. This is particularly true for Suffolk’s looked-after children and care leavers, who are at much greater risk of poor mental health and social exclusion, and are over-represented in the justice system. County lines activity provides a clear example of the importance of meeting complex needs with specialist expertise. The Youth Justice Board has long held this unique expertise, championing a child-first approach which prioritises prevention and safeguarding. We should therefore be cautious about transferring significant functions away from it.
The White Paper also discusses the importance of a joined-up approach to youth crime prevention. For victims who rightly expect accountability from our justice system, bringing Ministers closer to decision-making is essential for maintaining public confidence. But the transfer of key functions uniquely to the Ministry of Justice risks overlooking the intersection of other issues commonly faced by vulnerable children. The Youth Justice Board itself found that 72% of children sentenced in the youth justice system had mental health concerns, and 71% had speech, language and communication concerns. Issues with education, health and social care can therefore compound, making youth offending more likely. If we are to have real progress in the prevention of youth crime, all relevant government departments must be given a central stake in youth justice. If the Youth Justice Board is to play a greater role in driving improvement, it must be equipped to collaborate effectively across government.
More broadly, when debating these reforms, we must resist the misconception that youth justice is characterised by undue leniency. In reality, the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is one of the lowest in Europe. It is central to my Christian faith that every individual is made in the image of God and that nobody is beyond hope or redemption. The criminalisation of children and the entrenching of disadvantage through punitive measures can do much to damage the prospect that they might grow into citizens with a stake in our society. Young people must be given the tools to develop new patterns and to flourish in the society that they will one day help build.
This is something that the Youth Justice Board has historically facilitated through restorative justice. Victims want justice, but often they also want to know that what has happened to them will not happen to anyone else. Restorative justice gives victims a voice and enables offenders to confront the consequences of their actions and to turn their lives around. I therefore ask the Minister to clarify what place restorative justice will have in the Government’s plans for youth justice.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for tabling the Bill, and I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions throughout the debate.
I start by acknowledging the position we are in with youth justice and the excellent work done by the previous Conservative Government to halve the number of children in youth custody. In 2016, 939 children were held in young offender institutions. By 2024, that number had fallen to 432. The average custody population in 2010-11 was 2,222, but between April 2024 and March 2025, this had dropped to an average of 420 children in custody at any one time. This represented the lowest number on record, and these numbers are a testament to the hard work of the previous Government. On top of that, the number of first-time entrants in the system dropped from 45,519 in the year 2010-11 to just under 8,300 in 2024-25. I acknowledge the work done by the Youth Justice Board in that time and thank it for its help in reducing the number of children in the youth justice system.
This Bill seeks to reverse the direction of the Government’s proposed reforms to youth justice. Clauses 1 and 3 would set out in primary legislation that the Youth Justice Board would remain primarily responsible for certain existing statutory functions, including the provision of secure training centres and the certification of custody officer and escort arrangements, reversing the Government’s plan to centralise oversight to within the Ministry of Justice. Clause 4 seeks to remove the Secretary of State’s power to alter the statutory functions of the Youth Justice Board by secondary legislation and revokes the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales Order 2000, in which the Youth Justice Board’s statutory functions were expanded and powers to exercise some functions concurrently with the Secretary of State were introduced. These would have the effect of reducing future ministerial flexibility to adjust the Youth Justice Board’s role.
Clauses 1 and 2 would give a formal role to Wales, with Clause 1 requiring a memorandum of understanding between the Secretary of State, the Youth Justice Board and the Welsh Government within six months, where the responsibility for youth justice delivery is divided, with arrangements on implementation to be set out within a year. Clause 2 gives the Welsh Government a consultative role separate from the existing Government’s plans regarding devolution.
However, the landscape of youth justice has now changed, and the system must adapt accordingly. Reversing the Government’s proposals before they have taken effect and before their impact can be assessed seems the wrong way to proceed. As it stands, the Government need to ensure that they focus on preventing the escalation of crime, as the data indicates that repeat young offenders tend to start with petty crimes. They need to ensure that the Ministry of Justice handles its role of scrutinising the youth justice system well—we will continue to keep an eye on that—and continues to ensure that there are clear punishments.
The Ministry of Justice’s consultation on oversight and the funding of youth justice services closes today. When the Government respond to its recommendations, we will scrutinise them, but as yet it is difficult to assess the decisions that the Government will make, as doing so would pre-empt an ongoing process. Finally, as things stand, justice is not a devolved matter, so introducing that in a Private Member’s Bill with no consultation seems unwise.
For these reasons, we cannot support the Bill as drafted, but we look forward to scrutinising the Government’s response to the youth justice consultation in due course.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
My Lords, I should begin by declaring my interest. Until March 2025, I was the lead non-executive director and chair of the agency board of HMPPS, which was responsible for youth custody services.
I very much regret that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is not with us today. I had hoped that we would be able to hear what he had to say and that I would have the opportunity to pay tribute to his remarkable, ground-breaking work in this area. I hope that he is joining us out in the ether, but if not I certainly pass on my good wishes.
I thank all noble Lords for taking part in today’s debate. This is a really important subject. We may not always agree, but this has been a very well-informed and thought-provoking debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for tabling this Private Member’s Bill and giving us the opportunity to debate this today. I thank him and the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for meeting me and Minister Richards before today for what he described—and I very much agree—as a constructive conversation.
I commend the work of the Youth Justice Board. It has played an important, even ground-breaking, role in the formation and development of the youth justice system. Those of us with very long memories remember what the juvenile justice system, as it used to be known, was like. This is a remarkable transformation. The board has transformed the lives of many children and young people. It has also transformed the way the state works with children, overseeing, as noble Lords have said, a significant reduction in the number of children convicted of crime and sent to prison. I know—and I say this with some feeling—that many noble Lords played an important personal role in that. I pay tribute to their work, as well as that of the board and staff of the Youth Justice Board. I put that firmly on the record.
The youth justice system has changed profoundly since the creation of the Youth Justice Board in 1998. Today, although fewer children are entering the system than in the past, which is obviously a good thing, as a number of speakers have noted—including my noble friend Lord Rook and the right reverend Prelate—the children with whom we work are more complex and their needs are more acute, perhaps in part because of the way in which the world is changing in relation to children. Central government must be organised to be able to respond with clarity, focus and impact. I am afraid the proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, to restore the previous functions does not reflect the Government’s view of the current needs of the system. The board did not want responsibility for the custodial estate in 2017 and it does not seek that now.
The structures put in place nearly three decades ago may not remain the most effective way of delivering the outcomes we need. The noble Baroness, Lady Sater, made that point, and I think we all agree on that. However, the clear position of the Government is that individual arm’s-length body responsibilities and funding should be transferred to local leaders or returned to ministerial departments unless Ministers can make a strong case for their retention. That is the Government’s view across the board, as noble Lords know, and it has been reaffirmed in the comments of the Prime Minister on rewiring the state.
The Government commissioned an independent review of the Youth Justice Board led by Steve Crocker. A number of noble Lords referred to it. This concluded that although—as he pointed out and as has been said by some—the Youth Justice Board has “lost its way”, there remains a clear need for an independent body with technical expertise in the youth justice system. Steve Crocker recommended significant reform to meet the future needs of the system, with a stronger focus on driving efficiency, continuous improvement and providing evidence of what works.
I acknowledge what the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and others have said, but we are not accepting every recommendation of Steve Crocker’s work. The Government’s position is that we are building on his work. I want to be completely clear that we have no wish to abolish the Youth Justice Board. We want to retain an independent Youth Justice Board that is sharply focused on driving continuous improvement of local practice and capability, while responsibility for system oversight, standards, performance and funding should, in our view, rest with elected Ministers who are accountable to Parliament. Transferring responsibility for digital and IT provision to government will allow us to achieve better outcomes through linking the data on youth justice, which a small organisation such as the Youth Justice Board simply cannot achieve.
The Ministry of Justice will strengthen and support local services and strategic authorities—I will come back to the point about strategic authorities—setting clear standards and an evidence-based, proportionate national oversight framework that enables effective interventions when needed. While I note the comments that many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, made about the Ministry of Justice and its limitations, we are committed to that. We want a strong Youth Justice Board. We want professional experts to challenge the department. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, I do not mind a challenge or dissenting voices. I have had plenty of them in my short stint at the Ministry of Justice, which I hope will be a long stint. I do not accept the characterisation that we do not have or welcome dissenting voices.
We want the organisation to drive local services to improve and to achieve improved outcomes for children, particularly vulnerable children. Our intention is to allow the Youth Justice Board to focus on what we think it does best, while providing for proper democratic accountability where appropriate. The reforms would see the Youth Justice Board remain an independent, non-departmental body but with a clearer focus on improving youth justice services.
The Youth Justice Board will learn from the best and support the poorer-performing services. This will include interventions or hands-on support for struggling services, facilitating ongoing learning and peer-to-peer sharing of practice, and building the capacity and capability of staff for self-evaluation and improvement. The right reverend Prelate raised the question of restorative justice. That is exactly the kind of thing that we would like to see the sharing of learning on. It has particular application in the youth justice universe. It has much wider applications than that, but that is a good example.
The Youth Justice Board will build the evidence base on innovative new practice and retain the ability to award grants for direct research contracts and to generate evidence. This will be critical for the Youth Justice Board to identify, evaluate and share what works and provide practice-ready guidance for services to use when working with children.
The Youth Justice Board will maintain relationships to understand local variation and identify emerging issues. It will also target issues that are prevalent across the nation—such as violence against women and girls, disproportionality as respects black and minority ethnic people, and online harms—identifying causes and delivering targeted improvement to ensure that shared problems are tackled effectively.
Youth justice is already a largely locally led system. However, there are considerable opportunities to strengthen the role that strategic authorities play in preventing youth offending and supporting vulnerable children. This is an important part of our agenda on youth justice going forward. The Youth Justice Board will have a pivotal role in building capability in strategic authorities as it takes on a greater role in youth justice and youth crime prevention.
My noble friend Lord Rook gave the example of Manchester, and that is exactly the kind of thing we want to see happening in strategic authorities. I do not say that just because it is Manchester. I really hope, whatever the fate of this Bill, that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, and many others in the Chamber, will work with us on the agenda for future work on youth justice in strategic authorities.
The reforms put forward today in the Bill would see an expanded role for the Youth Justice Board, with restored responsibility for youth custody, which it has not exercised, as I have said, since 2017. I want to say a few words about our plans for the Youth Custody Service. The Government have set out their intentions to publish a youth custody transformation plan in the coming months. I think we all know that we need to do something about the Youth Custody Service. The youth secure estate must be managed by the Youth Custody Service, which is a specialist organisation with dedicated staff and a clear focus—I pay tribute to those staff with whom I have worked closely for many years—and which is directly accountable to Ministers. Ascribing responsibility to the Youth Justice Board would dilute its remit and distract from its most important function: supporting youth justice services to improve.
The Bill also proposes significant changes to the governance of youth justice in Wales. The Government recognise the distinct context in Wales, where many of the services that support children, including education, health and social care, are, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, devolved. We remain committed to working closely and constructively with the Welsh Government. We are already exploring with the Welsh Government how their role in youth justice could be expanded and we are supportive of arrangements that better reflect the devolved landscape.
In answer to the question about what funds will be devolved to Wales as part of that commitment, from April 2027, funding to reduce the use of remand for children, together with funding for early intervention and prevention services, currently delivered through the Turnaround programme, will be devolved to the Welsh Government. Discussions about the arrangements in Wales continue.
Under the Government’s plans, the Youth Justice Board will remain an independent public body. It will be a strong organisation of experts that offers precisely the practical operational support that today’s system needs for today’s children and today’s challenges. A strong board offering frank, independent and, yes, critical views to the Government is something we welcome. I look forward to debating this further when the Government bring forward their own secondary legislation later this year.
As I have said, I hope your Lordships will work with us as we take forward our work on youth justice. We are not in any sense complacent or passive in our approach to youth justice, particularly with regard to the future of the custodial state and the role of strategic authorities in youth justice, which will be priorities for myself and Minister Richards.
I am afraid the Government’s view is that the Bill in front of us would take us backwards and load up the Youth Justice Board with a broader range of functions that would be a distraction from the core purpose of driving services to improve outcomes for children and keeping our communities safe.
My final comment is on the intersection of the complex needs of children involved in the youth justice service, which a number of your Lordships talked about. For me, the biggest prize in thinking about the way we approach youth justice is in better meeting the needs of those most vulnerable children so that they live thriving and flourishing lives.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate. So many brought their unique perspectives to the discussion. I reiterate my thanks to the Minister and his colleague for having met with me and the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I admit to being a little disappointed by his response from the Dispatch Box, because I had hoped that the Government would have taken on more of the arguments that were made at that meeting and which have been made by almost everybody in the Chamber.
I take on board the Minister’s point about custody and the complexities of the system. He talked about more complexity, as many of us did. Many noble Lords talked about the need to improve the system and I do not think any of us said that it should just stay the same. The noble Baroness, Lady Sater, certainly mentioned this and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, talked about bringing new skills to the Youth Justice Board.
Our principal thought is that, if those powers are taken back to the Ministry of Justice, youth justice will be forgotten just as it was before. Noble Lords in that department have so much on their plate already that youth justice will suffer. The youth justice reforms of 1998 were a jewel in the crown of the then Labour Government. It is a huge mistake to tear them up. Of course, we can improve them—everybody in the House would agree with that—but not by going back to the system that we had before. That is what is being suggested by shifting oversight.
I am sorry that the Conservative Front Bench does not support us, although I am not terribly surprised. I slightly caution the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, against claiming some partisan success on this. Actually, although custody reduced during the Labour Government, the Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition and the Conservative Government, most of the credit has to go to the youth justice reforms of that Government. The one thing that people must recall is that it takes a long time for reforms to work through the system and deliver the sort of success that they did. That is why I am so worried about tearing up those reforms just at the point that they are having an effect. However, I thank everybody for taking part in this debate.
Microplastic Filters (Washing Machines) Bill [HL]
Friday 11th September 2026
(4 days, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Microplastic Filters (Washing Machines) Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Microplastic Filters (Washing Machines) Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Randall of Uxbridge
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
My Lords, aside from the commencement date and minor drafting changes, the Bill I am bringing forward to your Lordships’ House today is identical to the Bills of the same name introduced in the other place by my honourable friend Alberto Costa in previous Sessions—it just goes to show I do not really have an original thought in my head. I thought that the Bill was well worth presenting again, as previously I think it had been introduced under the 10-minute rule, which means that it did not have a Second Reading.
For many years, we have washed our clothes of man-made fibres happily, in blissful ignorance of what was released into our water and our environment. However, we now know that our clothes are made of millions of tiny fibres, the majority of which are plastic. These small plastic fragments, measuring 5 millimetres or smaller, are called microplastic fibres, and they are shed from synthetic clothes when produced, washed and worn. Globally, more than 840 million domestic washing machines are used; with every wash, these microfibres are shed and released into the water. They then make their way into the environment, with many ending up in the ocean and on our beaches. Research has estimated that between 700,000 and 7 million microfibres are released with every wash.
Due to their size, microplastic fibres are too small to be caught by standard washing machine filters and therefore end up in the sewerage system, where they are either removed during the sewage treatment process or, more worryingly, released into watercourses and, potentially, the sea. Researchers found that up to 650 million microplastic particles entered one wastewater treatment plant in Wales every day, with all of these ending up in sewage sludge. However, even the microplastics that are removed during the treatment process can still end up in the ocean. They are caught in the sewage sludge, which is usually used as a fertiliser on agricultural land, meaning the microplastics are released into the soil. Once in the terrestrial environment, they, too, can make their way into our seas.
Microplastics spread into the air, soil, ice and water and have been found in a range of ecosystems, from the deep sea to the summit of Mount Everest. Plants and animals may absorb, inhale or ingest microplastics, which can then be transferred through the food chain. Microplastics can cause chemical harms to living things, such as through the leaching of toxic additives, and physical harms, such as causing internal blockages and abrasions. Emerging evidence suggests that microplastics may be associated with broader ecological impacts and, indeed, human health issues, such as respiratory disorders, neurological symptoms and gastrointestinal issues.
The advent of technological solutions, in particular the fitting of filters within washing machines, can stop microfibres entering our wastewater and, ultimately, the ocean. Of the estimated 12.2 million tonnes of plastic entering the ocean globally every year, just under 1 million tonnes are primarily microplastics. The Bill in front of the House today would go some way to rectify the situation. I acknowledge that it is far from being a silver bullet, but does that mean that we should not take measures to do what we can to radically reduce the number of these microplastics entering our environment?
Clause 1 of the Bill provides the Secretary of State with the power to introduce regulations that would require manufacturers to fit microplastic filters to all new domestic and commercial washing machines in England. These regulations could also create associated offences punishable by fines. This would be done with statutory instruments made under the affirmative procedure, meaning that both Houses of Parliament would have to approve them before they became law. Requirements on manufacturers would need to be in place by 1 January 2030, and filters would be required to catch typically at least 90% of the microplastics measured by mass.
Clause 2 would confer a duty upon the Secretary of State to promote the benefits of microplastic filters and raise awareness of the consequences of microfibres shed from clothing. This duty would extend to schools and other educational settings, and the Bill would also allow the Secretary of State to publish guidance to public bodies related to these duties.
Clause 3 would provide that the Bill would come into force on the day it was passed and extend to England and Wales, though the Bill would apply only in England.
I can well imagine some of the objections to the Bill, which I may be hearing a little bit later. Some will say that the cost of fitting such filters would naturally increase the price of a washing machine, and I am sure it would—but I would argue that the price of filters would come down with increased production, and this is literally a small price to pay for the end result. Improvements in textile manufacture will also be very important in resolving this issue.
Others may argue that this is a burden on business— I would say, with some experience over the years, that this always a good excuse for doing nothing. I am very pleased that this Bill and its precursors have had the strong support of the Women’s Institute and charities such as the Marine Conservation Society; I have been a member of the latter for many years. I also declare my interest as a member of the advisory board of River Action. I have not yet applied to be a member of the Women’s Institute, but it is an admirable body, and I thoroughly support what it is doing. I thank the House of Lords Library for producing an excellent brief on the Bill.
As befits a Private Member’s Bill, it is a simple measure that would have a major benefit. I know that Governments are reticent to act on such things—I am not completely naive—but I urge the Government to give careful thought to this and not reject it out of hand or put it into the “too difficult” category. If this Bill is not successful, there is ample opportunity in the forthcoming and much-anticipated water Bill for this or something similar to be included. I do not think this issue will be going away. This is not the end of the cycle. I beg to move.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and I commend him on bringing forward the Bill and introducing it so powerfully. I join him in commending the Women’s Institute, which has been campaigning on this issue since 2017. Indeed, the title of its campaign, “End Plastic Soup”, gave me a phrase that I use very often. I have spoken to many grass-roots members of the Women’s Institute, who I know are very passionate about the issue, as well as those who are actually leading the campaign.
The noble Lord, Lord Randall, said—this is worth stressing—that about 60% or more of the fabrics produced in the world today are synthetic; they are plastic. It tends to be, broadly, the cheaper clothing that is made from these synthetic fibres, so we are also addressing an equality issue here, because we are going to see more synthetic fibres in poorer areas worn by poorer people, which is something that I will come back to. Some 9.4 trillion microplastic fibres are released from clothing per week in the UK. That is one of those numbers that is so large as to be almost unimaginable, but it stresses that the term “plastic soup”, as used by the Women’s Institute, is exactly the right terminology.
The noble Lord, Lord Randall, addressed some of the arguments we are inevitably going to hear against this. I think we will also hear about what we have seen happening internationally: the French Parliament legislated to have microfibre filters by 2025 but has failed to implement it, and the California State Assembly passed a similar Bill in 2023 but has seen resistance. We have seen claims that we are not really sure how much it is going to filter out and what consumers are going to do with what is filtered out—all of these issues. But I think the argument is that this is a major issue, on which you could have an iterative process of development with the manufacturers to make sure we bring in the law and we work out the details of exactly how it is structured—something that would appropriately happen in a statutory instrument. The Government could, as the noble Lord said, take this forward in the forthcoming water Bill.
Every time I speak about plastic pollution, I report a far-from-comprehensive list of the new reasons for concern about the wider, interrelated human, animal and environmental health impacts, particularly of microplastics and nanoplastics. I have talked before about how the placentas of babies born prematurely have higher plastic concentrations than the placentas from full-term births. I could add a further list about the 16,000 chemicals present in plastic, the impact of many of which we have no idea about, but I have a time limit. Let us see what we have learned recently about microplastic and nanoplastic pollution.
Patients with lung cancer in Greece, according to a report published just this week, had 20% more microplastics in their lung fluid samples. That is from a study from the European Respiratory Society. In Lake Geneva, Switzerland, which has probably some of the world’s best water treatment facilities—absolutely world-leading—they have found that the concentration of microplastics in the lake measuring between one and 100 micrometres may have been underestimated by more than 650-fold.
The New York Times picked up on a report from Cornell University in 2024 that found that, on average, people in Indonesia are consuming 15 grams of plastic particles every month, the weight of three credit cards. The New York Times is looking into the detail of this—and, if noble Lords have not seen it, it is well worth looking at. A large amount of that is waste from the global North that is shipped to Indonesia and dealt with inappropriately.
I declare my position as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Microplastics and note that that group has a report just out reflecting on the potential impacts on food security in the UK from the microplastics in the soil. It is not hard to see how you go from the washing machine to the river to the soil. This is a critical issue: the planetary boundary for novel entities has been far exceeded. We need to do everything we can.
This Bill is a modest step but an important one to take. I particularly stress the importance of Clause 2(1)(b), about raising awareness of the consequences of microplastics in closing through the laundry cycle—although, if I was to put down a friendly amendment, it would suggest that we should expect the Government to educate the public generally about microplastics and the potential damage. I ask the Minister if the Government have any plans for this. I refer back to the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act and our attempts to think about what is in our school uniforms and the plastics that they are filled with. Will the Government do something to educate the public about microplastics generally?
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge for bringing the Bill before your Lordships’ House and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for her valuable contribution to the debate.
The Bill raises the issue of microplastic pollution, over which there is increasing concern. An evidence base is emerging that microplastics can cause harm both ecologically and to human health. The World Health Organization has highlighted the need for further research into its impacts but, as a precaution, we should continue to reduce plastic pollution. Indeed, consumers and producers are increasingly aware of their environmental responsibilities, and many go beyond what the Government already require.
On domestic washing machines specifically, the House of Lords Library in its recent research note on the Bill estimated that they discharge anything between 6,490 and 87,165 tonnes of microfibres in the UK each year. That is quite a large margin, and it evidences the need for further research. The health and environmental risks present reasons why households may want to apply microfibre filters, which can then be disposed of as solid waste. Indeed, these can be retrofitted on to existing machines. However, the cost of these filters can vary significantly, as does their effectiveness. The Bill would mandate that such filters must catch at least 90% of microplastics, when measured by mass. However, as was stated by the previous Conservative Government in April 2023, the effectiveness is also dependent on user behaviour. Furthermore, we need to have a clearer understanding of what costs this would impose on households as well as industry before pressing ahead with such regulations.
Our position as His Majesty’s loyal Opposition has not changed. We expect the industry to continue innovating and developing microfibre filters, and we of course support efforts to research the issues more thoroughly. As a result, we do not yet believe this issue warrants primary legislation. That is not to say that we are not serious about curbing plastic pollution; on the contrary, the Bill would not tackle the sources of plastic pollution upstream. Therefore, I am pleased that this debate has allowed us to raise awareness of the issue and discuss how best we can tackle plastic pollution. It is in that spirit that I thank my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge for his hard work. I look forward to hearing the insights of other noble Lords and the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to today’s debate. There is clearly strength of feeling in the concerns around microplastics and the increasing problems that we are starting to see that they are causing. These are important perspectives and the Government absolutely recognise the legitimacy of the concerns that underpin them, so I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for bringing forward this Bill and for clearly laying out the concerns about microfibres, particularly in clothing and textiles.
The Government recognise the benefits of minimising pollutants at source. To tackle the issue of microplastic pollution in our waterways, we have already taken some action. We have banned wet wipes containing plastic, and that was built on a previous ban on microbeads in products. Those actions have marked a major step forward.
Particular issues around wastewater were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, talked about microplastics entering the sewerage system. We as a Government are committed to taking a systematic approach to tackling issues with drainage and wastewater, and that includes a real focus on tackling the root causes of sewage pollution. In England, wastewater treatment works remove up to 99% of microplastics, but we want to ensure that legislation, regulatory mechanisms and funding streams support the delivery of solutions.
The Government also recognise the importance of building a strong evidence base to understand pollutant sources, impacts and of course the most effective interventions to protect human health and the environment. In 2025, Defra finalised a research project on microplastics. The project assessed the impacts of intentionally added microplastics on the environment and human health. Defra is currently considering the results of this important analysis in order to inform our next steps. The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade leads on requirements relating to washing machine product standards, so we work closely together across the departments to understand the cost impacts of applying these filters. That needs to be balanced against the environmental harm that is caused.
Evidence that was presented to Defra in 2020 indicated variable performances of filters in trapping microplastics, as well as a range of costs associated with installing them in or outside new machines. However, I would very much welcome new evidence to assess the current state of filter technology. Recommendations have been made to industry to conduct a public willingness to pay survey, considering the cost of living challenges that we are currently undergoing, and to investigate and assess the suitability, feasibility, management, disposal and costs of recycling washing machine filters and the microplastics that are captured by those filters.
Before introducing any new legislation, we need to ensure that the evidence is robust and fully reviewed. For example, it must be clear that the product has a significant environmental impact and that any new requirements would not entail excessive costs or impact on product functionality. Filters may well form part of the solution, but there are uncertainties around performance, as well as cost, maintenance and disposal of captured fibres. We will consider product design, producer responsibility and end-of-pipe controls together, rather than imposing added costs on consumers before effectiveness has been established. The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, referenced the need for further understanding and evidence.
Having said that, we welcome the APPG’s second report and thank Alberto Costa, the Women’s Institute and the Global Plastics Policy Centre for their work. The report provides a helpful contribution to the evidence and policy debate and reflects the increasing public concern about the presence of microplastics in water, soil, air and the wider environment, which was clearly laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
We would like to acknowledge that we recognise the report’s five priority areas: a co-ordinated policy framework; action on major sources; stronger producer responsibility; improved protections for wastewater, sewage sludge and soils; and better monitoring and evidence. Of course, the recommendations cut across different policy areas and departments, so we will ensure that we come together where needed to properly consider them. Engagement with parliamentarians, industry, academia and civil society is invaluable in informing this work, and I very much welcome the continued dialogue on this important issue.
None of this, of course, diminishes the urgency of the challenge, as we have heard very clearly this afternoon. The Government are clear-eyed about the growing concern on the issue of microplastics, and we are acting through engagement with stakeholders and supporting research, including on the potential role of technologies such as microfibre filters, as we have discussed today. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, also made some important points regarding the education of the public in this matter. Again, we need to have as much information as we can, so we very much welcome a commitment from industry to develop and implement standardised tests to provide unequivocal performance data on washing machine filters.
In closing, I once again thank the noble Lord for bringing the Bill forward and for stimulating an important and thoughtful, although short, debate. While I share the ambition that motivates the Bill, for the reasons stated, the Government cannot support it. But I want to assure the noble Lord that government will continue to focus on exploring opportunities to improve our understanding of the sources of microplastics and the risks they pose and ensuring that the most effective interventions are in place to protect human health and the environment. I commend the House for the quality of today’s debate.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
My Lord, I cannot say I am completely surprised by the reaction of both Front Benches, and I thank them for their contributions. I detected, just slightly, a slight movement—at the pace of a sloth going on a go-slow—by the Minister towards this. I am afraid my experience of government and being a government special adviser on this is that it takes a lot to move positions, but I remain ever hopeful, and I know we will have other occasions.
I would like to thank sincerely the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I was delighted to see her on the on the speakers’ list, because she has the analytical skills and the scientific knowledge to fill in the gaps, whereas I try to do it with just a passion for something that, genuinely, I think lots of people share, particularly about the health risks to human health. That said, I am not going to sob myself to sleep tonight, but I am going to think of more cunning and devious ways to get this message across. In the meantime, I beg to move.