Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

To leave out all the words after “that” and insert “this House declines to approve the draft Regulations laid before the House on 24 February, as they grant the Health and Safety Executive powers to selectively adopt hazard classifications from foreign jurisdictions with limited accountability; fail to incorporate new European Union hazard classifications in line with government commitments on Northern Ireland; regress from environmental and public health protections retained in law post Brexit, thus extending the approval of harmful biocides; and make it easier for UK exporters of harmful chemicals to bypass controls.”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very clear introduction; I think at least one piece of new information was presented to us. As the Minister said, this is a fatal amendment because I continue to have very grave concerns about this SI.

I declare my interests to show noble Lords where I am coming from. My Consumer Products (Control of Biocides) Bill, on which a large number of noble Lords contributed positively at Second Reading, will lapse at the end of this Session, but I remain committed to its principles in the interest of protecting our own microbiomes, our existence as halobionts and those of other creatures, the health of the environment and the prevention of even more out of control antimicrobial resistance. Associated to that, I declare my position on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and the support I receive from the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, as declared on the register.

I note that this may be the last such debate conducted before the new trial of restrictive rules on the time length of SI debates comes into force, so I hope we can enjoy the chance to debate fully what our own Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee described as being “politically or legally important” and giving rise to

“issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House”.

I was asked by a fellow Member what place this debate has in the midst of multiple bouts of ping-pong; I suggested that maybe it was a gymnasium wall on which a thin coat of paint is being hastily splashed, which cannot mask the uneven and failing surface underneath, while 1970s ceiling panels hang above it—the type to make a builder suck her teeth and worry about asbestos. For, as our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlights, and as the Minister herself mentioned, these draft regulations reflect the fact that the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 powers expire in June this year, and they are the only ones available to cover the three assimilated chemical regimes using secondary legislation. The HSE has indicated that it considers that more general powers are required. I am interested that the Minister said she expects new legislation in 2027; I would like a further confirmation of that, because it is new information as far as I am aware.

All this is in the face of fast-changing knowledge of the risk we face from the chemical cocktail to which our bodies and the environment are being subjected. For context, I note the scathing report last week which had a call for urgent restrictions on the use of PFAS in consumer goods, including school uniforms, cookware and food packaging, from the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. I hope the Minister will be having a chat with her education colleague about that issue. At all main stages of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we heard support from around your Lordships’ House for a ban on PFAS in school uniforms. Given the action your Lordships’ House has just taken in ping-pong, the Government have a last-minute chance to take clear and decisive action on a cause of great health concern to many parents whose children are being forced to wear, by official rules, uniforms impregnated with these chemicals.

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[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is making some very serious points. However, in respect of the responsibilities of the HSE, surely she recognises that it is not just restricted to workplace activities? Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act explicitly mandates the HSE to take account of any harm produced by workplace activities to the public.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising what is essentially my next point. Yes, the HSE has these responsibilities included, but its whole raison d’être is workplace safety. There have been many concerns that it does not have the regulatory or conceptual framework to truly consider environmental safety either for humans exposed through consumption, for example, or for the natural world.

This Government have added a growth duty for the HSE. Janet Newsham, a trustee of the Workers Policy Project, has noted how this compromises the independence of the HSE. If it has a duty to economic growth—that great God—it has got to balance that against health and environmental risks. Will the Government reconsider the growth duty, given that it is clearly hampering the HSE’s work?

Returning to the detail of the SI, I note that the environmental charity Fidra concluded that the draft regulations were

“not fit for purpose due to lack of specificity and lack of statutory timelines which could result in inaction or slow progress on critical chemical regulatory controls”.

On other recent concerning official pronouncements, I will start with the CLP elements of the SI. The Minister in the other place supported aligning with the UN’s Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, known as GHS, rather than aligning with the six new hazard classes introduced by the EU.

The Minister in the other place repeated the claim from the HSE that there is a question around what the EU will do if these classes are not adopted globally. That prompted the European Commission to formally put on the record that it had not expressed any such commitment. Can the Minister confirm that the Government understand that the EU’s position on the CLP, as it is so clearly stated, is not to change to the UN model but to keep to its own, reflecting its better understanding of the growing risks?

I turn to the detail of the SI, to which the Minister also referred, and the powers about foreign jurisdictions. I note what she said, that the EU is the only regime that fits within the Government’s classification. I welcome that assurance, but I wonder whether the Minister will consider what might happen if we had in future a different Government who might interpret those regulations in a different way.

I rather suspected we would have some more Northern Ireland people here. I am running out of time, but I raise the issue of what problems this raises for Northern Ireland.

The final element of my concern is around making it easier for UK exporters of some of the most harmful chemicals to bypass controls. These are the products we have decided are too dangerous to use in the UK. Can the Minister assure me that removing the need for a special reference identification number from the HSE is in line with our commitments under the Rotterdam convention on prior informed consent? Is this not just a reflection of an ideological attachment to this idea of cutting red tape, which has done so much damage across so many areas of our safety?

I note that, as campaigners often highlight with UK exports, last year we exported 8,500 tonnes of pesticides that are banned on British farms because of the dangers they pose to human health and nature. Some 98% of these are produced by the Swiss-headquartered, Chinese-owned agrochemical giant, Syngenta, and include huge quantities of diquat, which is reported to have caused symptoms in Brazilian farmers including tremors, temporary paralysis and permanent eye damage.

There has been enough exported of the notorious bee-killing insecticide thiamethoxam, banned here in the UK, to spray an area bigger than England. This is going to countries including Côte d’Ivoire and Morocco. A broader question than this SI is: are the Government planning to act on this clearly morally untenable and environmentally dangerous situation, which is a risk to people around the world? Ultimately, it is about the health of everybody: no one is safe until everyone is safe, and there may well be products coming back to the UK from those countries on which those products have been used.

I have one further specific question that I was asked to put to the Minister, because there is considerable concern about this. We have seen disbanded a regular Defra event, the UK Chemicals Stakeholder Forum, which had offered media, NGOs and other stakeholders some degree of access to chemical updates from the HSE. Are the Government planning to restore or replace that forum so that the public are able to scrutinise our chemical regulations?

I am aware that I have said a lot of very technical stuff and a lot of very large words, but this is stuff to which your Lordships’ House really needs to pay attention. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has a very long report with many expressions of concern in it. I have not yet decided whether to put this to the vote—I am well aware of the situation with fatal amendments—but there is real concern across many different NGOs and people concerned with public health, and it is really important that we have a full debate on these issues. I beg to move.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have sympathy with the amendment, and the Minister is right to set out two main aims for her planned statutory instrument. It is right that we should allow certain products to continue which are necessary for wider health and safety issues while alternatives are found, or while we further research the known risks of these products. It is also right that the United Kingdom can have an independent strong body of health and safety and other chemical regulation which is also a bit more business-friendly and timely than that which the European Union produces.

I note that the Minister tells us that the system she is proposing for England, Wales and Scotland will be a little more flexible, and more helpful to innovation and to the products we currently have than the Northern Ireland system, which will be dynamically aligned with, or entirely dependent upon, the growing volume of regulation coming in Northern Ireland. So I have a lot of sympathy with her high-level aims. It would probably help the House if, when she comes to wind up the debate, we could have a little more information about whether Northern Ireland is going to be badly disadvantaged by losing access to the products that are currently used for important health and safety and chemical industry purposes, in a way that will not apply in England, Wales and Scotland.

That also poses the issue that when the Government get into even more detail in their SPS and other regulatory discussions with the European Union, they should dig in to avoid having to dynamically align with a known system of chemical regulation that the Government are quite rightly saying is less than perfect and which we need to differentiate the English, Welsh and Scottish system from to be more successful. The British chemical industry is in free fall at the moment, mainly because of the high costs of energy and the big retreat from petrochemicals. We have seen massive closures in the last year or so—it is really struggling. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to listen carefully to what it says about regulation.

I, like the Minister—and I am sure every noble Lord present in this place—would regard health and safety as the urgent priority. You do not compromise on safety. But we are talking here about being able to produce, make and sell—and then use—what are often intrinsically dangerous things, for a good purpose. You cannot ban them because they are in and of themselves dangerous, because they are not dangerous when they are used for a good purpose, as with a strong disinfectant killing germs—but, obviously, people must not drink it. We need rules, which the industry imposes, on handling and disposal, because there are obvious risks if people do not handle dangerous chemicals well or if they are not disposed of safely under controlled conditions. That requires a different kind of regulation.

I just hope that when we consider this, we can have a little more information about whether Northern Ireland is being disadvantaged, and whether there will be immediate problems either for its chemical industry or for the users of its chemicals, given that more things will be banned in Northern Ireland. I wonder whether we can have a little more reassurance that we will not sell out to an EU regulatory system that we think is far from perfect, when we could get some greater advantage out of better regulation but rather less of it. It would be good to set this into the broader context, that our chemical industry is in free fall. It is really struggling. We are losing factories and capacity, and it would be very important not to do anything in these regulations which made that more likely to occur.

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[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions. Although we are having this debate in the Chamber rather than in Grand Committee, it is always good to have the opportunity to scrutinise things. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, made an important point. These things should not go through without any consideration. They are too important for that, and the chance to have the conversation is welcome.

The regulations introduce necessary changes to a highly technical set of regulatory regimes, but the changes preserve the high standards of protection we inherited from our time in the EU and ensure we can continue to recognise decisions made by the European Chemicals Agency, which remains highly respected. I will try to go through the points raised. I will not get to them all and I will have to write, for which I apologise. I will start with the list from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as she tabled the amendment.

First, the noble Baroness asked about adding the EU’s SVHCs to our list. The Government intend to make secondary legislation by June 2027, providing for the incorporation of the six EU hazard classes in GB CLP. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, also asked about that. The work on developing that is already under way, and the HSE is currently engaging with stakeholders to understand the potential impacts of aligning with the EU on CLP measures, including its hazard classes. It has issued a stakeholder impact survey for exactly that purpose.

The work has been progressed separately from the SI, as I explained, due to constraints in the REUL Act that prevent an overall increase in regulatory burdens. The Government have made it clear that reaching a negotiated SPS agreement with the EU is a key priority. Negotiations are ongoing but we are committed to reaching an agreement by the end of this year. Broadly, it is expected that the areas in scope will dynamically align with the relevant EU legislation. I hope that reassures noble Lords on that front.

To be clear, we will continue engaging with the EU and other international partners at the UN GHS to consider the scientific basis for the six EU hazard classes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, knows, discussions at the UN GHS have not yet concluded, so the outcomes of those discussions have not been determined. The UK will take into account the EU’s intended action in response to the outcomes of the UN GHS work when formulating our own position on the conclusions of the UN GHS consideration. I underscore that we intend to make legislation by June 2027 that provides for the incorporation of the six EU hazard classes in GB CLP, and that is being done separately for reasons I have just explained.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Bennett, raised questions about the resourcing of the HSE and its size. The HSE’s funding and its priorities and progress are monitored by the Government. DWP is the sponsor department for the HSE, and a delight it is. It is important work, much of which is at the centre of what we do. To be clear, the fundamental scientific judgments are not changing as part of our changing the regime here. The HSE’s business plan for this year confirms its continued commitment to concentrating on the most serious risks and to targeting industries with the greatest hazards and sectors with the worst risk management record.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, I note that the HSE significantly increased its resources to deal with the extra workload after leaving the EU. For example, on 1 January 2021 there were 262 technical staff in the HSE’s chemicals regulation division, working across the six chemical supply and use regimes. Today that division has approximately 440 staff—so where it is necessary to respond, additional resource is put into those areas.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised the issue of the regulatory approach and the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, pulled it from the opposite direction. The HSE’s regulatory approach is aligned with the requirements of the growth duty, but its job is to achieve the right regulatory balance between supporting safe business practice and protecting workers and the public. Proportionate health and safety regulations facilitate economic growth, but the key is that they have to be proportionate. The noble Lord, Lord Redwood, is quite right. This is not about taking risks or cutting corners on safety; it is about making appropriate, proportionate decisions. There is no point in leaving regulatory requirements in place if they serve no purpose and do nothing to make anybody safer but simply make things more difficult for business.

I should make a correction. Apparently, when I was talking about how biocides actually have a useful role in controlling harmful organisms, I said, “harmful organisations”. If I did, I was not dissing anyone’s organisation, just the organisms, so apologies for that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked about the jurisdiction question. We can already consider a jurisdiction from anywhere—this is about speeding it up—but I reassure the noble Baroness that qualification for the fast-track evaluation process has to be subject to the criteria set out in the SI. The only jurisdiction that meets them now is the EU; no other jurisdiction adopts GHS in the same way as the UK, apart from the EU, and no other jurisdiction apart from the EU has an open and transparent classification system based on public consultation, as we do. Other jurisdictions can submit proposals, but they will be part of the normal-track evaluation process, and any proposals to add jurisdictions which are considered to meet the criteria will be included in the HSE work plan, subject to consultation as part of the work plan, and decisions are taken by Ministers. However, the bottom line is that they have to meet the criteria—that is the safety net.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked about removing the special reference identification number. She mentioned cutting red tape. Cutting red tape can sometimes be good. Special reference identification numbers are not a requirement of the Rotterdam convention. They were introduced for use in an EU IT system to which we no longer have any access, so they serve no useful purpose. Therefore, removing the requirement of the companies to obtain a special reference identification number for small quantities of chemicals being exported solely for research or analysis removes a completely unnecessary burden on businesses and on the HSE as the PIC-designated authority. They simply do not have a function.

The noble Baroness asked about the disbanding of the Defra stakeholder event. Regular stakeholder engagement is really important in this area, as in others, but it can take many forms. I am advised that Defra will continue to engage closely with a range of stakeholders to gather their input, harness their expertise and share Defra’s thinking. It does not plan to organise any further CSF meetings but its engagement remains strong through its monthly chemicals NGO forum and the industry chemicals policy communication forum, as well as through relevant events. With regard to any HSE materials that were discussed in that context, I want to say really clearly that the HSE is happy to engage and consult with stakeholders at any time. If there are concerns about the HSE, I encourage the noble Baroness to get in touch with me and we can take that forward from there.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked about the exceptional circumstances. Just to be clear, these reforms do not allow exceptional circumstances to be used to weaken protections. Divergence will occur only in exceptional circumstances and only on scientific and technical grounds, not on economic grounds. Government priorities explicitly emphasise maintaining high standards of health and environmental protection, and leaning into alignment with EU decisions unless scientifically justified otherwise. That could, for example, be the fact that more information may have come to light after an EU opinion had been issued, but it is scientific.

I am assured that the HSE’s commitment to align with EU discussions has been welcomed across all chemical stakeholder groups—although, I acknowledge, possibly not by the noble Lord, Lord Redwood. That reflects a strong commitment across a number of priorities, including reducing trade barriers that arise from divergent standards, which will support trading goods with our biggest trading partner, and protecting the UK internal market by ensuring that different regulatory requirements do not apply in Northern Ireland, significantly reducing the risk of supplies of chemical products no longer supporting the market in Northern Ireland.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, that this process is not about banning other products in Northern Ireland. One of the things that closely aligning where possible does is to protect Northern Ireland’s supply chain by making sure that the company will still be able to supply and will want to supply. The extent of agreement or divergence with EU classification proposals or decisions will be identified and reported in the HSE work plan. I hope that answers the question he asked about that.

I think somebody asked whether extending expiry dates would reduce risk protection. Just to be clear, these are substances that have previously been evaluated under the GB BPR, meaning that the risks are understood and they have already been approved for use. Postponing the expiry dates allows the HSE’s regulatory resources to be focused on higher priority evaluations, including first-time approvals where the risk is less well understood, and a limited number of high hazard renewals. I hope that makes a difference. It will mean that critical biocides remain on the GP market that in themselves would cause issues if they were not available. Nothing in the regulations allows new biocidal products which are not already on the market—rather, the purpose is continuity to ensure that essential products, such as those critical for aviation safety and safe drinking water, are not lost.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, raised the GB CLP notification database. In the absence of that, GB CLP suppliers can use other resources, such as the European Chemicals Agency’s analogous database, which may encourage agreement between EU and GB suppliers on hazard classifications of their chemicals, otherwise known as self-classifications. Duty holders also still have a legal obligation to self-classify. Substances that pose higher risks are already regulated under frameworks such as REACH, the GB BPR and the GB Plant Protection Products Regulations, or other downstream legislation such as the UK cosmetics regulation or the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations. This ensures ongoing oversight of relevant hazards and associated risks.

I may be running out of things I can usefully say. I hope I have answered the things that are critical to today’s vote. I can assure the House that I will look carefully at Hansard and write to noble Lords with questions that I have not been able to answer.

Although I am grateful for the scrutiny, I stand by the case I have set out for these regulations. This instrument is practical, proportionate and urgent. It keeps essential biocides available, safeguarding public health and critical infrastructure, while preserving the ability to respond quickly to emerging risks. It speeds up our regulatory decision-making so that it is more transparent and better targeted to GB needs, enabling us to align more quickly with EU classification decisions and prioritise chemical hazard evaluations of greatest importance to the GB market, and it simplifies export requirements under GB PIC while ensuring that we continue to meet our international obligations. These are measured improvements to ensure that the system works for Great Britain as intended, supports our chemicals industry, protects people and the environment, and allows the HSE to regulate where it delivers the greatest value.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has been reassured and will not push her amendment to decline these regulations. If she does, I urge the House not to vote for it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this quite short but important debate—perhaps shorter than we expected due to the absence of our Northern Ireland colleagues.

I particularly thank the Minister for a comprehensive, careful and clear response. I think there will be significant reassurance in what she said to the campaigners with whom I have been working. For all noble Lords who might be thinking about their dinner, I give advance notice that I am not intending to put this to a vote, having heard the debate.

However, I will say a couple of things. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for a very clear explanation of the importance of this debate and for the important point that relaxing time limits is not a mere detail but potentially a matter of great safety and health concerns.

In responding to the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, I have to say first that he spoke with some glee about strong disinfectants killing germs. I would love to have a chat with him about antimicrobial resistance and where that interacts with what he said. I also think he suggested that this is some kind of Brexit freedom. I point to the fact that, on substances of very high concern, zero for us and 44 for the EU is not some kind of freedom—I do not think anyone could reasonably call it that.

I was pleased to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott—indeed, from the Tory Front Bench—about the concerns about HSE capacity. The Minister pointed out that additional resources were being put into chemical regulation. Of course, unless the overall resources increase, that means that resources are being taken away from other places. I note in passing silicosis, which I have done a lot of work on and which is associated with machine worktops, and the issues around that.

I may have misunderstood the Minister’s introduction, which is undoubtedly my fault. I was pleased to hear about the EU’s six classes and that the Government intend to lay a statutory instrument on that by June 2027. I think I misunderstood that, thinking that that was talking about primary legislation in 2027. I therefore ask the Minister to write to me about what the Government’s framework is for primary legislation, because both the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and the HSE itself say that primary legislation is absolutely necessary to enable us to keep up to date with the secondary legislation.

I will conclude with one final thought on what kind of chemicals we are talking about here. There is a class of chemicals known as second generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Many Members of your Lordships’ House and of the other place have been asking the Government questions about this, including my honourable friend Ellie Chowns. She was told that the Government were considering monitoring residues of these very dangerous chemicals in red kites, buzzards, sparrowhawks, peregrine falcons, red foxes, otters and hedgehogs. That gives a sense of the way in which we are contaminating our environment, our natural world, with some very dangerous substances. That is something I urge your Lordships’ House to keep a very close eye on. However, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Pension Schemes Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 23rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation; I am not going to get into that particular discussion, although I entirely agree with the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, without getting into the legal details.

I rise briefly to express Green support for Amendment 167 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which she so ably introduced. As I understand it, the government amendment is, essentially, delivering the same purpose. I said at Second Reading, which I recall was the day before our Christmas Recess, that my festive conversations were entirely preoccupied by the term “fiduciary duty”, which was really appropriate to the season—but what we are talking about is really important.

Having got into the legal details, it is worth coming back to what we are talking about here. Pensioners are people. They have to live on this damaged and deeply unhealthy planet. They hope to live for many years, so what their money is invested into has real, concrete impacts on their lives. It is in their interests that their money is invested well for the future. That is why we support the government amendment.

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[Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 170 and will speak briefly in support. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has comprehensively set out the amendment and, following very helpful feedback from my noble friend the Minister, I will simply respond to a few points which were made by other Peers in Committee.

It was suggested that the UK is a small player in thermal coal and will not make a difference. We actually have the largest volume of pension assets in Europe and the third largest globally. There is no limitless demand for high-risk assets, so were the UK pension sector to sharply lower its exposure, this would not lead to a rush for companies that everyone knows to have a limited lifespan. As was said:

“It seems absolutely bonkers that new money is going into new coal mines”.—[Official Report, 23/2/26; col. GC 285.]


It does not make sense in terms of protecting the environment, and it does not make sense economically to invest in stranded assets.

These investments are not only in equities but in bonds. The effect of buying equities on the secondary market may not be instant but, over the long term, it is likely to support the reduction in the cost of borrowing or increase the returns on equity funding. This ultimately supports more investment. The Transition Pathway Initiative, established by the LSE, has assessed the decarbonisation plans of the top coalmining firms. After two decades or more of engagement, none is remotely close to being aligned with the Paris agreement and, as was admitted, opportunities for future company-level engagement are strictly limited by the threat of litigation in the US. Indeed, the suggestion that an exit strategy from thermal coal inevitably means exit from tobacco, sugar or energy-using forms is scaremongering. We should judge the amendment on the basis of what it does.

As the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said, Amendment 170 does not require an exit from anything. It seeks only to give government the tools to monitor and manage a risk that it has quite rightly admitted that it does not currently have a handle on. Risk management is a core part of fiduciary duty on investments which have been variously judged by my noble friends as carrying high financial and climate risk. Every child deserves to breathe clean air.

I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister. I am extremely grateful for her genuine engagement so far about the Government’s plans for further action in this area.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join a distinguished cross-party group, signing and speaking to Amendment 170. Like the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I want to reflect back to what was said in Committee, when the Minister said that she shared the cross-party concern about pension scheme investment in thermal coal, that she recognised the high financial and climate risks, and that she welcomed some industry-led reductions in exposure. She said that the Government would

“support and challenge the sector in rising to that task”

and that the levers to do that included

“better data and better transparency”.—[Official Report, 23/2/26; col. GC 291.]

That is what this amendment aims to deliver, because the transparency is just not there now.

Transition plans are often cited as a solution to this. These were a manifesto commitment in July 2024, to meet Paris alignment transition plans, but 18 months into this Parliament, there has not been a response to a consultation which took a year to emerge, and more or less asked, “Should we do all of this?” Recently, the Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, said that transition plans for pension schemes were not a priority, which is reinforced by the fact that the Government are not taking powers in this Bill. There have been suggestions that consolidation will fix all this, but an analysis by Corporate Adviser Intelligence shows that the DC multi-employer schemes most commonly used for automatic enrolment are in fact the largest of them and more invested in thermal coal, and that the mid-sized schemes that would be consolidated are less exposed.

It is also worth stressing that there is a precedent for Ministers writing directly to the largest pension schemes to understand their responsible investment practices and for the Government setting non-statutory expectations about pension schemes’ investment practices. Those on the Front Bench in front of me will probably not thank me for pointing out that when they were in government, they set out a non-statutory expectation in the 2019 green finance strategy that pension schemes and others would disclose climate risks in line with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures by 2022. Later, the then Pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, wrote to the 50 largest pension schemes to request their policies and understand their climate investment strategies. That is what the previous Government were doing—surely this Government do not want to be behind that.

It is clear that there is actually a latent appetite to go further. Two-thirds of the audience, mostly representatives of pension funds, at the recent Pensions UK conference debate between Caroline Lucas, my former honourable friend, and the noble Lord, Lord Gove, agreed that pension funds were not now doing enough to tackle the climate change risks. These are, as I said in Committee, financial as well as climate risks. We simply are not taking the steps that are needed. This amendment would provide the way forward that the Minister suggested in Committee that she wanted to see. Here it is, so I hope to hear positive news from the Government on this amendment.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment. Given the quality of the speeches that have explained exactly what it would do and its very limited but important purpose—simply to allow the Government to have a proper handle on the data and a proper understanding of the exposure that pension schemes have to thermal coal investment—I think it would be a valuable step forward, one that I hope will get support from all around the House. In Committee, the Minister rightly acknowledged the high financial and climate risks associated with thermal coal investment and indicated that it was the Government’s expectation that industry will do more to reduce levels of coal investment, but we need to understand exactly what those levels are and to monitor them. For that reason, I support the amendment.

Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Thursday 12th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for introducing this Bill. Her passion for this policy is evident and I am sure that she is very glad finally to bring it to us 615 days after the current Government took power. The Green Party called for the end of the two-child benefit cap during the 2024 election and has continued to do so subsequently.

As the noble Baroness said, this policy was introduced by the Cameron-Osborne Conservative Government in 2017, deliberately choosing to put children into poverty—children who had done nothing to deserve that situation. It was a cruel policy and it is very good news that it is finally going. I offer congratulations to the many campaigners who have worked for this day, including Labour Back-Benchers in the other place. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who, I have no doubt, has been working very hard on this and rightly identified where the Government urgently need to go further, which is where I will particularly focus.

This is a missed opportunity, as it fails to act on the household benefit cap. According to Z2K, the charity that aims to fight poverty, at least 150,000 children in larger families will see no benefit at all because they are subject to that separate benefit cap. The household benefit cap means that many larger families will be trapped in deep poverty. In a case study cited by Z2K, Maryam is a lone parent of three who fled domestic abuse and now relies on universal credit. She has been affected by the two-child benefit limit and the benefit cap and is left with just £25 a week for the family to live on after rent. Even with today’s Bill, her income will not increase at all. If the benefit cap was lifted alongside it, it would allow her to meet her basic living costs and escape severe destitution.

There are also the families affected by disability. The Government’s child poverty strategy highlights that children living in families where a household member is disabled are at particularly high risk of both poverty and deep material poverty. Yet, under the changes in the universal credit legislation, financial support for seriously ill and disabled people under universal credit will be reduced by £215 a month. For a disabled family with three children affected by this, that universal credit change will wipe out 62% of the benefits from the two-child limit abolition. Policy in Practice, which did some very valuable work, found that one in 10 households currently held back by the two-child limit will not gain at all when the policy is reversed and one in 10 families will see only part of their potential gain as they become benefit-capped through the policy.

I am citing those figures, and I am sure others will come up with other figures, because there are no official figures on this. In fact, I asked the Minister in a Written Question in December for the Government’s figures on how many families who would have had money from the end of the two-child benefit cap would be hit by the household benefit cap. The Answer that I got on 5 January was:

“The requested information is internal analysis that is being quality assured to official statistics level. Plans to publish this in due course are ongoing”.


I wonder whether the noble Baroness can tell me how that is going.

Looking at the overall situation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that, without further policy action, child poverty rates will have crept back close to the 2024-25 level by the end of the forecast period in 2029-30, leaving a change of just 0.4% in those poverty levels. Another thing aside from the overall benefit cap is the local housing allowance, which is currently wildly inadequate.

I have two final brief points. I welcome the three maiden speakers today and look forward to those from whom we have not yet heard. They are obviously interested in child poverty but I urge them to think about branching out, as they find their feet in this House, into other areas that impact it. I spoke yesterday in the Moses Room about financial regulation. That is crucial to child poverty and a threat to the security of us all. Please think about engaging; do not just leave it to the banking insiders but pick up issues such as that as well.

Finally, to respond directly to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, I am slightly surprised that, as the Conservatives are very into history, their leader has not really looked into the history books on the Boer War. British society and this place became very concerned that poverty, poor diet and poor housing meant that young men were not fit to fight for Britain, because of child poverty. If you are going to recruit 20,000 more soldiers, how will you do it from a society blighted by child poverty?

Schools White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend has identified the benefits of early intervention, as he says. We need a clearer and more evidence-based approach to what is appropriate for children with complex needs, which is why we are creating a new set of nationally consistent specialist provision packages. They will be designed to set clear expectations of what high-quality specialist provision should offer. They will be developed by experts and tested with families to make sure that they work in real life and reflect the best evidence about what helps children thrive. As I said, they are not based on diagnoses; instead, they will focus on the support that a child needs to learn, communicate, feel regulated and take part in school life. This important work will also be reviewed by an independent national expert panel, which will help to keep them up to date.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my question relates to the plans for a review of education, health and care plans after primary school from 2030. For children with a special school place from September 2029, there is a promise to keep their place, but their EHCP will be reviewed.

I am drawing on my experience as a governor at a primary school in London that had an autistic unit. When it was created, the assumption was that children would be there for a few years, would get support and would then be able to move into mainstream schooling. That was not the experience. As school years go forward, the curriculum becomes more complex and the social setting of a classroom becomes more complex, and children were not able to make that progression.

If there is to be a review of EHCPs at the end of primary, do the Government have any evidence or data on how many people with an EHCP will lose it? We have to pick up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about parents putting so much time, energy and money into securing these EHCPs and the fear of losing them. What will the benefit of the review be versus the cost to parents?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

First, to be clear, the majority of children who have an EHCP are in a special school. No child who is in a special school will need to leave a special school placement at any point. Secondly, on the point about bases in schools, part of the investment that we are putting in is to enable more opportunities within schools, to develop the type of bases that will provide specialist support for children but enable them to stay in mainstream schools in their communities, alongside their friends.

Free Speech Complaints Scheme

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I hope that the noble Baroness had a relaxing recess. As I said in response to her noble friend, a range of options has been proposed. I am not quite sure that the legal advice is as authoritative as she suggests, but I am in constant conversation with officials about the most appropriate route through which to commence the complaints scheme. We will make progress on this.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware that the greatest threat to academic free speech—the ability to research, publish and teach students—is the funding situation of UK universities. Half of UK universities face a deficit in 2025-26 and as many as 50 are at risk of closure in the next year. The University and College Union tracker shows that 105 universities are facing major redundancies. Our universities are in crisis. What are the Government going to do?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right that the freezing of tuition fees by the previous Government put considerable financial strain on the university sector, which is why I am sure she will support this Government in our inflation-linked increases to tuition fees in order to fund universities. There is no point willing the ends if you are not willing to will the means.

Pension Schemes Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 218A. Before I do so, on Amendment 212, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, made a valiant attempt to square the circle of opposing some forms of mandation while supporting others, but it did not quite get me over the line. So I do not support that amendment.

However, I am interested in my noble friend’s Amendment 218E on the TNFD. We have spoken many times in the House about nature and climate being two sides of the same coin, and we now have a framework that enables organisations to understand nature risk properly. It therefore seems logical that it is integrated into our thinking on pensions.

Although I acknowledge my noble friend’s concerns, the reason why I support Amendment 218A is that, at its heart, its point is to clarify that pension schemes trustees can take systemic-level risks into account when carrying out their fiduciary duty. We could have debates on other aspects, such as taking members’ views into account, but the amendment is attractive because it still has fiduciary duty at its heart rather than seeking to overrule it. That is a beneficial approach because it does not put those of us in Committee, or the Government, in the position of taking those views and making those decisions for people—that remains with the trustees, which is, I think, appropriate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, eloquently made most of the points to be made in relation to Amendment 218A. The Government agree that we need to clarify that fiduciary duty can include a consideration of systemic risk; that point was accepted by the Pensions Minister in December. So the question then becomes: what form should this improved guidance take? Should it be legislative or statutory? I think that it should be legislative because so much of the understanding of fiduciary duty relies on the interpretation of case law. Therefore, we need a clearer legal underpinning of our understanding of this duty for it to be robust and for trustees to use it, which is the barrier that we are already trying to solve.

I would like to understand from the Minister why the Government have a preference for statutory guidance over legislative change. In the past, the Government have pointed to the importance of flexibility and consultation—those are allowed for through this amendment, but it would have the added benefits of proper parliamentary scrutiny and consultation with outside bodies.

I also want to ask the Minister about the scope of the Government’s proposed approach; this was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Why is it limited to occupational trust-based schemes, if that is the case? We have about half of pension assets in local government pension schemes and personal pensions, so why would this not extend to those?

Finally, I wish to press the Minister on timing. We have heard about transition plans in this debate. Work on those has been under way for a long time, and we have heard about the extended timeline, which may extend even further—one never knows. We have heard about the TNFD and the time it takes to get momentum behind this. We have heard about the fact that we were debating these issues three years ago in the then Financial Services and Markets Bill. We had one of our round tables before the election was called and I think that the Government have had further round tables to try to corral their efforts to address this issue.

However, the point remains: there needs to be a legislative basis for this statutory guidance. That is my understanding. We now have a pensions Bill. Let us hope that we do not have another one. We hear the phrase, “We will bring forward proposals when parliamentary time allows”—well, this is that parliamentary time. I am sure that the Government have lots of other things they want to do with future Bills in future Sessions of Parliament. May I encourage the Minister to seize this time? If she does not agree with Amendment 218A, at least on the statutory guidance, bring forward the legislative basis so that the Government can get on with the thing they say they want to do.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 212, to which I have attached my name. As has already been widely noted, it has broad, cross-party support. I would have attached my name to Amendment 218A had there been space and to Amendment 218E had I caught up with it; I will certainly talk to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, should she be thinking about bringing it back on Report, having at Second Reading praised the noble Baroness’s contributions in that direction.

Like that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, my speech at Second Reading majored on the fiduciary duty issues, which this group very much gets to the heart of. I was very interested in the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, on the TNFD. It is great to hear such broad political support for that; I hope that it is something we can take forward.

I will mostly focus on Amendment 212. Noble Lords might expect me, as the Green, to get up and talk about the climate emergency—that is standard—but what I am really getting up to talk about today is financial risk. I am talking about the carbon bubble, which is a very severe risk, among many other risks, that all pension savers face. There is a strong economic case for green pensions reform. UK pension schemes have been estimated to hold at least £88 billion in fossil fuel companies and £10 billion in thermal coal alone. Here, I will drop in statistics relating to the biodiversity point: UK pension schemes hold £300 billion in companies linked to deforestation, more than 85% of leading schemes have been found to lack credible climate action plans, and only 4% of pension assets are invested in climate solutions, the things that could be providing the long-term future.

One of the issues that this amendment brings forward is the fact that there is a lack of monitoring of this situation by both the Government and the Pensions Regulator. There were a number of Written Questions in the other place in September about the risks of stranded assets, contribution to fossil fuels expansion and investments in fossil fuels. The Government’s response was that they did not have any estimates on these matters. Subsequent Written Questions led to the understanding that the Pensions Regulator also has no estimates on these matters. There is already some data on this, which is being captured by independent organisations—but I am afraid that is really not good enough. The carbon bubble is something the Government really need to have a handle on.

As some other speakers have already said, we know that many of the largest pension schemes, including some of the biggest names, continue to be invested in thermal coal, as well as other very marginal fossil fuel extraction, which will swiftly become uneconomic as global demand tails off. That is already happening with thermal coal. The International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2026 report, out earlier this month, suggested that global demand for coal has already peaked. China and India, as well as Europe, all saw declines in 2025, yet these investments are still happening.

It is common for the idea to be floated that pension schemes should not exit these investments, despite holding them solely for short-term benefit and for the ruination of other holdings in pension savers’ portfolios, but should try to engage in the companies concerned. However, this has not had any discernible impact. After decades of so-called engagement, no coal mining firm has set strong decarbonisation targets, and it is very hard to see how they might actually do so.

Many oil and gas firms are nominally signed up to far away 2050 targets. I am sure we have all heard the phrase that having a 2050 target is the same as having no target at all. Barely any have anything like a fast enough transition to come anything close to being Paris-aligned. We saw with BP and Shell how quickly firms row back from hard-won targets when their CEOs change or a few shareholders start to grumble. What we are talking about here, I stress, is an approach to protect pension savers’ financial interests. When the UK Government’s policy is moving towards decarbonising the economy, UK pension policy should not be undermining that, particularly when it comes to thermal coal overseas.

[Lord Pitt-Watson (Lab)]

My Lords, in contributing here, I should say my background is in responsible investment, with Hermes Fund Managers. It still on occasion offers me an office, from time to time. Since this is about responsible investment, as you can imagine, I could not more strongly support the principles of what we are debating here if I tried. I also absolutely welcome the cross-party nature of this: my noble friend Lady Griffin speaks from a trade union representing beneficiaries of pension funds. However, I am just not sure that these three amendments get us where it is that we want to get to.

To start with the trustee issue raised by Amendment 218A, of course trustees should take into account systemic issues in their investment and stewardship, and they should do so in the interests of the economic, environmental and social interests of their beneficiaries. We make a mistake if we separate those interests because they go together. If we want evidence of the significance of that, we might look at research from Columbia University suggesting that 85% of the return you get from your pension fund will be systemic and only 15% will be from idiosyncratic things that your fund managers have done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am simply not going to relitigate that all over again. Okay, I will give it two minutes, since the noble Lord has raised it. If he is referring to asset allocation mandation, as I made very clear during our debates on that subject, the trustees’ fiduciary duty should guide them, were those provisions ever to come into operation. If the trustees believe that they were not in the interest of their members, we would expect their duties to guide them to make representations and seek an exemption under the savings interest exemption test. That, along with all the other safeguards around it, deals with that question. Now, let me try and focus on climate for today; I have no doubt we will have plenty of other opportunities to discuss mandation, and I look forward to those.

Under the existing regulatory framework—I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, put it very well—trustees of UK pension schemes must already set out their policies on financially material environmental, social and governance factors, including climate change, within their statement of investment principles. They then have to publish annual implementation statements showing how those policies have been applied in practice. Since the Pension Schemes Act 2021, the larger schemes also have to publish annual reports aligned with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures framework, the TCFD. Those disclosure requirements ensure that trustees have the information they need to make informed investment or divestment decisions.

The Government are strengthening these reporting frameworks to equip businesses and investors with the tools, standards and clarity they need to plan credible transitions and seize the opportunities of a net-zero economy. For example, last year DESNZ advanced an important manifesto commitment and consulted on transition plan requirements for UK financial institutions. Alongside that, DBT consulted last year on new UK sustainability reporting standards. My own department, DWP, working with the Pensions Regulator, is currently reviewing trustees’ TCFD requirements to assess the impact of the current climate disclosure regime, including a comprehensive stakeholder survey exploring the impact of TCFD requirements on governance, strategy, scenario analysis, risk management, member outcomes, engagement, reporting costs and future reporting. To support that, the regulator will present its findings on the practicalities of introducing transition plans for pension schemes to us this spring. These future reporting reforms are intended to modernise disclosures and provide schemes with critical insights into companies’ decarbonisation plans, which is information trustees can then use to judge whether investment or divestment is the appropriate course of action.

We should acknowledge the scale of the voluntary action that is already under way. Around two-thirds of UK pension funds now have net-zero commitments, many of them ahead of 2050. Funds are backing these commitments for significant investment: the London Pensions Fund Authority has allocated £250 million to its environmental opportunities fund; Border to Coast is investing in new UK wind and solar projects; and Nest has committed almost £1.3 billion to renewable energy infrastructure.

There is no single correct approach to managing climate-related risk. Trustees can, and do, divest where appropriate—for example, the Church of England Pensions Board announced its divestment from Shell plc and other remaining oil and gas holdings in 2023, following more than a decade of engagement. However, we recognise that some pension funds could, and should, be doing more. We will continue to support and challenge the sector in rising to that task. The right levers are better governance, better data and better transparency, not hard-wired requirements to decarbonise that remove trustee judgements and risk unintended harm to savers’ long-term outcomes.

Amendment 212 would prohibit schemes holding certain fossil fuel-related investments, even where companies have credible decarbonisation plans. The Government believe that such rigid prohibitions risk rushed divestment and would undermine trustees’ ability to exercise informed judgement. For those reasons, the Government cannot support this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It is very easy to cherry-pick individual schemes that have taken action but, as I said in my initial comments, the Financial Innovation Lab says that there are still more than £10 billion in thermal coal investments. Some industry research due to be published shortly by Corporate Adviser Intelligence shows that seven of the largest 19 schemes used for automatic enrolment, including Aviva, Royal London and Scottish Widows, remain invested, via their default fund, in one or more of thermal coal, tar sands and Arctic drilling. Another, SEI, reported that it has excluded these sectors but, last summer, it still had holdings in Glencore, which mines around 100 million tonnes of coal a year.

So, although there are these nice examples, such as those just provided by the Minister, surely the Government must look at this as an overall whole and see not just some good case studies but the norm and the rule right across the industry.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

It is probably worth me being really clear on the Government’s position. We recognise the high financial and climate risks associated with thermal coal investment. We support strong climate risk governance and expect trustees to integrate climate considerations into decision-making. We welcome industry-led reductions in coal exposure, as well as broader alignment with net-zero goals where we see them. However, we want to see more. As I have just said, we want specifically to challenge schemes to do more; I was offering examples of where things are going. Exposure is expected to decline over time, driven by market forces, global moves towards cleaner energy and evolving investment practices, but we still think that it is essential that trustees and managers retain the flexibility to make responsible long-term investment decisions in the best financial interests of their members.

I turn to Amendment 218A from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I thank her for taking the time to come and discuss these issues with me; it was a very helpful meeting. The question of whether pension trustees may take long-term factors into account in their investment decisions is manifestly not a new one. I will not rehearse the full history, but we should acknowledge the considerable body of work that already exists in this space; in case I did not want to do so myself, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, helpfully reminded us of some of that. We had major contributions from the Law Commission in both 2014 and 2017. More recently, in 2024, as the noble and learned Lord said, the Financial Markets Law Committee produced its comprehensive report. Alongside these, there have been several respected legal opinions, including Eversheds’ work on behalf of NatWest Cushon and that of Sackers for ShareAction, which relates directly to this amendment.

Across all these analyses, one central principle emerges with complete consistency: a trustee’s primary duty is, and must remain, to invest in the best interests of scheme members. However, what is equally clear is that a degree of uncertainty persists, although I take the noble and learned Lord’s point on whether or not it should. Trustees can, and do, reach different interpretations of how their duties apply when considering factors that extend beyond immediate financial returns, such as climate risk, demographic pressures and impacts on members’ future living standards. Although these matters are often long term in nature, they can be financially material and are plainly relevant to both savers and the wider economy. We recognise the need to give trustees greater confidence in this area.

However, the Government do not agree that creating a new statutory duty in primary legislation is the right or necessary approach. The current legal framework already allows trustees to consider ESG factors, systemic risks and long-term impacts where they are financially material. That position has been consistently affirmed.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make a few comments on this group of amendments. On Amendment 230, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I have great sympathy with what he says, and I hope that it may be an issue that the Minister will address when the SEND reform plans are presented in due course.

I understand the intention behind Amendment 198 and have a lot of sympathy with it. I can think of lots of schools that have been put in quite difficult positions and lots of children who have not had a good deal having being allocated to a particular school. The problem here—something that was not addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran—is that, on the whole, schools are not queuing up to take the most challenging children. They might want to do their best by them and believe that that is their job, but, with the accountability mechanisms the way they are, it tilts the balance away from schools taking children who offer particular challenges.

If you put in legislation a whole set of reasons to say no to a given child, that does not make the child or the family feel very good, and you would have to work hard to make sure that it was for a valid reason and not an invalid reason. My approach would sooner be that you put support in and make the SEND system work. I am an optimist. I do not think we have to give protection to some schools from taking challenging children. I think we have got it in us to adjust the policy framework, go in there and help them succeed. That would be serving every child and not discriminating against them.

My main comments relate to Amendment 199. We semi-rehearsed this in Committee, so I will not go over that again. I would never support a situation where a school that was unlikely to succeed had more children allocated to it at the expense of a school that was doing well. If that was the only decision, I would probably end up supporting the amendment, but it is much more complicated than that.

There is a bit of a conundrum at the heart of this, and it goes to what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said. I agree with parental choice but I do not agree with the market in schools, and there is a difference between the two. Parental choice is right and good and desirable, and we should write the law to facilitate it whenever we can. In a market, however, you do not intervene; you let things fail. They wither away on the vine, and that takes time, and then they fail and then close, and that leaves a gap. Look at the high streets in some of our small towns and cities—we cannot have that for schools. We cannot have a schools policy that has in it an acceptance that some schools will wither on the vine and fail. It is not good for the children who are there. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, when she was a Minister, and her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, would have gone into such schools to intervene and try to make them improve. That is why I have never used the term “market” in relation to schools: parental choice yes, but market, no. Somehow, that is at the core of my concerns about this amendment.

There are two issues. If it was about not wanting to go to the surplus places, I would agree with the noble Baroness. If there are more children, let us try to put them in the schools that are flourishing. But if it is a situation where the number of students on a roll in a given geographical area is falling, something has to happen. If you can merge them together, that is great, but you can get the difficult situation where you have to do something else. That is where I would manage parental choice and whatever market there is. I worry that if we say that their numbers cannot fall but their numbers can fall, all we do is make it more difficult for every school to thrive and succeed.

A school that is just turning that corner, as the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench described, that has been taken over by a good academy, got itself a new head and perhaps has a new housing estate nearby is on its way. It would fall under this because it does not have a good Ofsted inspection or anything like that.

If we look at Camden, 96% to 100% of schools are good or outstanding. I do not know, but I suspect that Camden is going to have falling rolls at some point because it is a London borough. This would give protection to every school in Camden because none of them is failing. Most of them are maintained schools, not academies, but it does not matter as they are all doing a good job. This clause would not work there. The way that schools would read this is that there is now a law that if it has had a good inspection in the last three years, it is protected. If you tried to enact proposed new subsection (5D)(a) and (b), there would be an almighty row because schools would have been given protection by this clause.

I would sooner play to our optimism. Where schools really cannot succeed, let them go and manage a good education for the pupils, but in cases of falling rolls we have to do everything we can to plan appropriately across a geographical area to make sure that we give every school the best possible chance of doing well.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and largely to agree, although I would go somewhat further and say that I think we have reached the situation of a market in schools in which very crude judgments are being applied by Ofsted, and schools are being pushed to game the system. That is why I signed Amendment 230 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and why the Green group will oppose Amendment 199 should it come to a vote.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was charitable when he said that there is a strong suspicion that off-rolling is going on. I am afraid I have no doubt that off-rolling is going on because up and down England, particularly in some of the most deprived communities, I have spoken to parents, often parents from very disadvantaged backgrounds themselves, who have said, “I’m trying to home-school my child now because the head teacher said they thought that was the best thing that could happen”. That was not home schooling by choice. That was usually pupils with special educational needs that the school just did not want to deal with. I have some sympathy with head teachers. Having been a school governor, I know how much pressure head teachers are under to keep up with the results. The problem is that we have created a competitive system where schools compete against each other instead of working together to create the best result for every pupil.

Amendment 230 is very modest. It simply calls for a review. I can tell my anecdotal stories, but I cannot say how big the problem is. I have seen it in many places, and I am sure that it is quite widespread. I do not believe the noble Lord intends to put this to a vote, but surely we can ask the Government to look at this anyway. As other noble Lords have said, it is something we should know about because this is one way in which we are failing some of our most disadvantaged pupils. Amendment 199, if it were to be passed, just furthers that sense of competition, which is the last thing we need in our schooling system.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 198 and will touch on Amendment 230 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Listening to noble Lords around the House, I find it surprising that they consistently believe that inspection, for which I was responsible for seven years, does not place a heavy emphasis on inclusion. Certainly throughout my time it did. The current framework has increased that focus almost to the point of giving up on looking at education, for which one learning walk and the results are about the extent of the coverage. Inclusion is and has long been taken extraordinarily seriously.

There are two issues that I want to touch on. The first is that however much we might want to believe that every child’s special needs can be coped with, there are times when those special needs consist of problems that inflict real harm on other children. The most awful parental complaints that came across my desk were about children who had been seriously assaulted and harmed, on occasion raped, by another child who had been admitted by a school either conscientiously trying to include a child for whom the local authority was desperate to find a place or that had been directed to take a child. That is agonising to learn about. We have to acknowledge that the interests of other children need to be considered when placing the most difficult children. That is important for children most of all but, of course, it is important for staff as well. If people are trying to work outside their capacity, schools tend to deteriorate, and that is not good for anybody.

Linked to that, I want to make a point about off-rolling, which has been touched on. In my time we put more of an emphasis on looking for signs and pursuing that—inquiring into it—where we found it. One of the things we discovered is that it is extraordinarily hard to characterise definitively whether an individual case is a case of off-rolling. There is typically quite a long history, a deterioration of the relationship between the child and the school. It is not a clean and tidy yes or no. Getting to a point where you could definitively say what the extent was would be extremely labour-intensive. The issue, in my view, is not a lack of regulation to prevent this—inspection is perfectly capable of disincentivising it—but we have to acknowledge that it needs a lot of resource that simply does not exist in Ofsted or anywhere else to dig into individual cases and establish the extent and the remedies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I reinforce what has just been said and endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said. He and I have made common cause on this for some time.

I shall be extremely brief, because I want to make just one point. It is not so much about the substance of the amendment but why, as has just been said, it is essential that we take citizenship teaching seriously in this country. It is crucial because, at the moment, there is a problem with public trust in government and in Parliament. It is slow and declining and, unless we do something about it, we are going to be in real trouble. We need to invest resources into the teaching of citizenship. That means making sure that schools take it seriously and have the incentive to do so. It is no good just saying it is in the curriculum. Schools have to realise, “We have to teach this, we’ve got the incentive to do it and we have the resources”. It cannot just be left to any teacher on a wet Wednesday afternoon to teach citizenship. It is crucial and has to be taken seriously. I regard this amendment as absolutely key to British democracy.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, except that I do not believe that we can put all the pressure on schools, which have so many other pressures on them.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

I totally agree. I should have said that I regard this as necessary but not sufficient.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Schools have faced so many other pressures with exams, results and Ofsted judgments, that saying “And you’ve got to shove citizenship in here, but you’re not really going to get rewarded for it” is not going to work. The direction has to come from the centre.

It is interesting that this group of amendments has been so rich and apparently so varied. Actually, what it does is talk about education that prepares students for life, not just for exams or jobs but to be citizens, members of communities, neighbours and possibly parents, and it prepares them to have healthy bodies while they are doing that. That is the only point I will make on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, who made her point powerfully. Physical education has been totally downgraded, and that has to stop and be reversed.

In responding, I have to start with the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that respect for the environment was “twaddle”. I looked it up in the dictionary. Among the definitions were “trivial” and “foolish”. I am assuming that the noble Baroness understands that she had to breathe to be able to deliver that speech. That relies on plants, algae and cyanobacteria to generate the oxygen to allow her to breathe. So that label is obviously incorrect. I will leave that there.

I turn to Amendment 220, which the proposer, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has not yet introduced. Schools do need practical and lawful guidance, but forcing the Government to bring that guidance in on the day that the Bill becomes an Act will inhibit schools’ ability. The guidance was always intended to be non-statutory, including when it was first published in draft by the previous Government. I acknowledge that we have not yet heard from the noble Baroness, but I do not think that, in Committee, we heard any explanation of why the guidance needs to be statutory.

I will speak very briefly on the two amendments that I actually signed. Amendment 208 has been very ably spoken to by others; I am just going to make one additional point. This is about providing relationship and sex education to persons of 16 and 17 in education. Your Lordships’ House chose to call for a ban on social media for under-16s. We do not know where that will end up, but, if the ban comes in and, assuming it works, young people at 16 start accessing a whole range of previously banned material, surely, they will need the help of education and support to be able to work through, process, understand and think about that. So we should think about how those two things fit together.

The other thing is that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, knows that I have backed her Private Member’s Bill at least twice previously. She introduced it very clearly. The one thing I will add is that, in terms of education for life, we ask schools to create more space in school time in particular for cultural and social education, but where are they going to find the time? That assembly time could be a really useful time and, if that is preparing people for life—developing cultural interests, developing artistic interests, developing a love of the theatre or a love of music, all things that help people prepare for a rich and satisfying life—that is what we need our schools to be doing much more of.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall very briefly add my support to Amendment 243C and, in doing so, declare my interest as a member of the board of the London Marathon Foundation. As we have heard, schools play a crucial role in the formation of lifelong activity habits, but they need to be properly supported, both to provide more opportunities within school and to ensure that what they offer meets the needs of the various interests of young people and children, to make sure that they fully engage with physical education. A national strategy would give schools the structure they need to guarantee consistently high-quality physical education, as well as help them build partnerships with community sports organisations, creating pathways that link school-based activity with accessible opportunities outside school.

In its recent submission to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into community and school sport, London Marathon stressed the pressing need for national and local government, schools, governing bodies and charitable and commercial organisations to align behind tangible shared objectives to get children and young people active and, most importantly, keep them active. By mandating the publication of a national strategy for physical education and sports in schools, this amendment will be an important step to delivering just that.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 209 goes to the heart of what families rightly expect schools to do: keep children safe. This is not a novel or radical proposal. It responds to a long-standing and well-evidenced failure of the current system. For too long we have relied on guidance and good will, yet allergy safety in schools remains inconsistent and, in some cases, dangerously inadequate. This amendment matters because it moves us from aspiration to assurance.

Children continue to experience severe allergic reactions at school. Some have died. Families live with the daily fear that a simple mistake—a contaminated surface, a misunderstanding, a delayed response—could be fatal. The tragic death of Benedict Blythe exposed not a single error but a systemic lack of preparedness. His family’s determination to prevent another such tragedy deserves our respect—and action. I also recognise the work of the National Allergy Strategy Group and its member organisations. Its position paper, produced with the Benedict Blythe Foundation, sets out in calm, forensic detail why voluntary guidance has failed.

Schools are under huge pressures, as we have heard, and without a statutory framework, allergy safety too often slips through the cracks. I understand that the Minister met the group yesterday, as we have heard, which is welcome, and I hope she will update the House on the outcome of that discussion and any assurances given.

I became involved in this issue for a simple reason: a neighbour’s child is afraid to eat in his own school canteen because of his allergy. When a child cannot safely eat at school, something is plainly wrong. That quiet daily anxiety is shared by thousands of families. Amendment 209 is proportionate and practical. Without legislation, we cannot guarantee consistent protection for all our children.

The four amendments in my name are probing. I seek reassurance on how the framework will work in practice. Amendment 210 addresses a well-known gap: external catering providers. Compliance with allergen labelling law does not in itself create a safe school environment. Unless a school’s allergy policy clearly applies to caterers and is reflected contractually, responsibility becomes blurred and children are put at risk. There must be no opportunity for third parties to argue that the school’s policy does not apply to them.

Amendment 212 extends that principle to other external providers. Schools, as we know, are busy places and well-meaning third parties can inadvertently introduce serious risk if they are not bound by the same policy. I have heard of a case where a third-party supplier brought a box of sweets into school as a gift, entirely unaware of the danger this posed.

Finally, Amendments 213 and 214 raise a practical question about costs and responsibility. Who should fund adrenaline auto-injectors, and how should supply and replacement be organised? An approach that relies on individual schools risks duplication, inconsistency and waste, particularly where children already receive these devices from the NHS. The same question arises in relation to training to use them. If the provisions in Amendment 209 become mandatory, responsibility for funding and facilitating proper training must be equally clear.

We have done this before. As the noble Baroness has said, the Government funded defibrillators in all schools, because the case was compelling and the cost proportionate. The same logic applies here. I hope the Minister will address these points directly, but, if the drafting of Amendment 209 is not quite right, I urge the Government to bring forward their own amendments at Third Reading. What matters is not ownership but outcome. We must not miss this opportunity to put allergy safety in schools on a statutory footing and prevent further, avoidable tragedies. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, having attached my name to Amendment 209, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, so powerfully introduced. I express my strongest possible support for Amendment 209 and commend the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, for making important points in his amendments.

I will tell a little tale of how I got involved in this. Like most people involved in politics, I have encountered around the country parents who say that they are worried about allergies and their child at school. In my case, I was walking down a corridor of this House, past the dining rooms, and the Benedict Blythe Foundation was holding an event to highlight the issue. I was almost literally dragged in to meet Helen Blythe, who has such a tale of horror but a powerful voice to say that she does not want this to happen to any other parent’s child. That is a demonstration of where we have got to today: campaigning works and people can make a difference through their actions. I particularly want to record that.

The case has been powerfully made, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cotes, said that there may be further technical solutions to injector pens. We do not need to argue about that. It is about the idea that every school has these instruments, whatever they are, guaranteed to be in date because the law says they have to be, and has teachers and other staff confidently trained to be able to use them in a moment of crisis. That should be absolutely basic. There should never be any question that, when something goes wrong, people are asking, “What do we do?”, “Who knows?”, “Where do we find it?”, “Is the cupboard locked?” We all know that those kinds of things can happen, unless the rules are set down in black and white in legislation. That is why I very much hope we will hear positively from the Minister that the Government are prepared to put this in the Bill, whatever the fine detail, because a child’s life is so important.

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 209, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, to which I have added my name. I declare my interest as a parliamentary ambassador for the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation.

In doing so, I will not see my youngest daughter this evening, who is severely allergic to peanuts, because of the rather unusual hours that our House sits. I hope I will see her tomorrow evening, Chief Whip permitting, as she will be off to school in the morning very early—and, like the rest of us, I need to sleep sometimes. No doubt she will use this opportunity to ask me to explain, not for the first time, what exactly it is that we do in the House of Lords and why so much of it is done after dark. I very much hope that tomorrow, I will be able to give her the best of all possible answers.

I will remind her that, a few months ago, on 16 September to be exact, rather late that night, along with many other noble Lords who I see sitting here in the Chamber this evening, I was adding my voice in support of an amendment designed to keep children safe—children like her, in fact, who have the misfortune to suffer anaphylactic shock if they come into contact with a small piece of peanut or some other food, as she has twice, frighteningly, done. Along with others, and with the excellent support of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Allergy UK, Anaphylaxis UK and the Benedict Blythe Foundation, I argued then that the Government should ensure that all schools have spare EpiPens available in case of such emergencies and that staff are trained in their use.

As the clock ticked towards midnight that night, my noble friend the Minister responded as follows:

“The measures to support children with allergies proposed in this amendment could be achieved without requiring primary legislation; we will consider how we might take them forward”.—[Official Report, 16/9/25; col. 2187.]


Tonight, I am hopeful that this is precisely what has happened, and that my noble friend the Minister will stand up and confirm that the Government will shortly be issuing statutory guidance setting out in detail how all schools will be required to properly protect children with allergies, and, in particular, that noble Lords will be assured that there will be statutory guidance requiring schools to have effective allergy policies in place, to have adrenaline devices such as auto-injectors available, and that staff will receive mandatory training on the use of adrenaline devices such as auto-injectors. In which case, I will be able to tell my daughter that these late nights can achieve remarkable things, and that it is precisely because of the way the House of Lords works that this has been achieved.

After all, we are talking about an amendment which has strong support across the House, led by the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. It is supported by my noble friend Lady Kennedy, among others, who has professional expertise in the subject, and has been encouraged by those impressive charities. To give due credit, we are talking about a Government who listen to the evidence and act accordingly, assuming that I have understood correctly what my noble friend the Minister will announce shortly.

I would still prefer to see my daughter in the evenings more often, but I am happy not having been able to do so on 16 September last year and this evening if the House acts to protect children at school with allergies. She will be happy too, and, in due course, so will thousands of parents and their children at risk of anaphylaxis. What an honour it is to be a Member of this House which can change lives so effectively.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendment 233, as I was not able to speak on it in Committee. I am supportive of the other amendments in this group too.

The Labour Party manifesto stated that

“nothing says more about the state of a nation than the wellbeing of its children”,

which is music to the ears of many of us. But if we are to know what the state of our nation is through the lens of children’s well-being, we need to measure that well-being nationally, comprehensively and regularly.

Many of us warmly welcomed the idea of a children’s well-being Bill but, when it emerged, were a bit disappointed that it did not have that much to say about children’s well-being explicitly. This amendment would help to put well-being explicitly at the heart of the Bill, with implications for both the main parts. I hope the Government will now look favourably on this modified version of the amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I strongly support Amendment 233, as I did in Committee, as well as the other amendments in this group. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who reflected what many of us have been saying: the children’s well-being Bill has been short on well-being. Earlier—much earlier, yesterday now—we were talking about sport, culture, PSHE and citizenship education. But we need to see what does and does not work if we are going to deliver some of the changes that are clearly so urgently needed.

I will refer to one survey: the National Parent Survey 2025, conducted by Parentkind, which found that unhappiness among children doubles between primary and secondary school. The parents said that the chief reason that their children were unhappy was that they were finding lessons uninteresting: the figure was 42%, which really is telling.

I return to the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report 2025, already referred to, which of course was reporting on the opposite. One of its recommendations was:

“Introduce a national wellbeing measurement programme”.


It is just such an obvious thing for the Government to do.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, on these Benches, as is true across the House, of course we want our children to have the highest standards of mental health and well-being, and the data to support this, but, as in Committee, we do not support the specifics of these amendments.

On Amendment 233 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, presented this morning by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, we felt that the Minister’s response in Committee was a constructive way forward and substantially addressed the goals of the amendment, albeit perhaps not in the way that the signatories would prefer or advise. My reading of the Minister’s remarks was that the Government did commit to providing non-statutory guidance, including a standard set of questions and additional tools and resources to support implementation.

As in Committee, I am sympathetic to the gap in provision that Amendment 237 from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, seeks to address: in particular, the postcode lottery that she highlighted in her remarks this morning. I also recognise that it expressly prescribes the provision of qualified practitioners and implicitly prescribes that any interventions have a sound evidence base. As my noble friend Lady Spielman pointed out in Committee, too many interventions have been used in schools in relation to both mental health and well-being, which Amendment 242 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, addresses, which have been shown subsequently to have caused more harm than good. That is clearly something we need to avoid.

I return to the point I made in Committee and that we have heard fervently debated on Report, including today: the single most powerful thing this Government can do to restore the mental health, well-being and sense of belonging of our children would be to keep smartphones out of school and prevent access to social media for the under-16s. Teachers, parents and their children will not thank this Government for being slow to act.

Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, tempting though it is, I will save my wider comments on the Pension Schemes Bill for tomorrow, when I look forward to seeing the noble Lord once again in Grand Committee. It has been a great delight in recent weeks and I look forward to having the pleasure of discussing these things again tomorrow.

In answer to his questions, the decision was not inevitable. The Secretary of State looked at the evidence, assessed it all carefully and made a decision. Having made that decision based on the evidence, he issued a statement and put his reasons for the decision in the decision document which has been placed in the Library of the House.

I have two further points. One is serious, in that I agree on the importance of people saving. The Government are pursuing the Pension Schemes Bill and all the measures in it to make sure people get proper returns on their money, to ensure people can save more. That is why we set up the Pensions Commission to look at questions of adequacy. Secondly, if the noble Lord’s Government had really wanted certainty on this matter, they could have made their decision at any point before the election—but they did not.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, following the previous question, I note that saving for a pension is extraordinarily difficult for so many people who are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. It is really important not to preach to them about savings that they cannot possibly make.

I declare an interest in that I first met the WASPI women in 2015 and advised them on their first petition to Parliament. I am afraid I had to somewhat gently say that yes, they would get 100,000 signatures on that petition and Parliament would debate it, but it did not mean that the obvious sense of their argument would suddenly win. Politics does not work like that. So, here we are now in 2026.

My question to the Minister refers to one particular WASPI woman I met on the road outside here. She had quit her job at the age of 59 because her company was making redundancies. She thought she would get a pension very soon, so she left and took the redundancy so that younger people could keep their jobs. She then found that she would not get her pension for years. She ran out of the redundancy money and ended up on jobseeker’s allowance. She applied for job after job and did not get them. She had been an office manager for decades for a medium-sized enterprise. Then, the Department for Work and Pensions insisted that, to keep her jobseeker’s allowance, she must go on a CV-writing course and a whole lot of other really basic pieces of training. She felt utterly mistreated and abused.

I understand why the terminology in this Statement is the way that it is, and that the Government are talking in careful legalese, but as we have seen in reports today, the WASPI women are planning to fight on, and good on them. More than that, can the Minister understand how people who have been put through that ringer of a decade of poverty and struggle, and of being thoroughly disrespected by the system, would also like to hear words that acknowledge that?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Just the other day, I received a letter from the Work and Pensions Secretary which, with reference to the baseline report, refers to the development of milestones. Could the Minister say more about this or, if not, perhaps report back to the House at Third Reading? A clear commitment to non-statutory targets and milestones at least would do much to strengthen the strategy’s credibility with stakeholders.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the powerful and important speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the equally important speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bird. I signed the similar amendment in Committee, but I left a space on this one in the hope against hope that a party less likely than mine would have signed up to it and that a broader spread of support might have been shown—but that did not happen.

On the point the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made about a yardstick, I was thinking—perhaps because I have been out campaigning on the doorstep this morning—about an additional argument that was not made in Committee or here: this would be of help to voters. A Government starts out and sets targets; then, as you get to the end of the Parliament and the next election, voters would have a clear sense of whether they had met their targets and done what they intended to achieve. It would also put great pressure on all parties competing in the next election to say, if they are elected to be the Government, what their child poverty reduction target will be. That would be useful, clear and obvious to voters.

We must acknowledge where we are now. We have already heard about child poverty, but must refer to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s analysis of the OBR figures, which says that the headline poverty rate between 2026 and 2029 will stay essentially the same. The poorest are getting poorer. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the addition of deep poverty to this amendment: 6.8 million people across these islands are in deep poverty, the highest level on record. It has hardened—a technical term that I have just learned —as the average person in poverty is now 29% below the poverty line; that was 23% in the mid-1990s.

One of the obvious things that would address this target and make a big difference would be the abolition the overall benefit cap. I applaud the Government’s action on the two-child cap, but removing the overall benefit cap would immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty. We would be able to see progress towards a positive target.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I will reflect on Scotland, as it shows the impact that targets have. With the Scottish child payment, the lowest rate of child poverty on these islands is in Scotland. It is still not great, and should be much better, but Scotland’s 23% compares with 31% in England and Wales, and 24% in Northern Ireland. Setting targets focuses minds and enables voters to make judgments.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I very much support all the amendments around trying to make uniforms more affordable, but I want to speak about a health time bomb that we are sitting on, much in the way that we spoke about smoking some years ago, or ultra-processed food. It is the whole question about PFAS in our systems: in everything we eat and touch, but in particular, in this case, in school uniforms. Uniforms that are made from fabrics that contain PFAS constantly contact your skin and the results and the emerging evidence are now incontrovertible. I also support Amendment 119A from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the health, generally, of uniforms.

Forever chemicals, as they are commonly referred to, are a group of over 10,000 chemicals that exist over many products. We call them “forever chemicals” partly because they are so widespread and partly because, so far, they do not appear to break down. They are relatively new, so we do not know whether they are going to break down in 100 years. Right now, though, they are not breaking down. The quickest way for any of us here to find out whether we have them in our system is to get the test, give a drop of blood and find out what is in your body.

Serious evidence is emerging. Yesterday morning I signed an NDA with Netflix in order to watch its newest documentary on the question of forever chemicals. In particular, this was around children, babies and fertility, but it obviously stretched to the wider implications for all of us, and in particular our children, because they have grown up in the plastic era. There is now evidence from Denmark to suggest that prenatal exposure is associated with reduced IQ scores in seven year-old children, and in Germany, there is new research showing that PFAS is significantly associated with reduced tetanus, rubella and diphtheria immunity. So it has effects all over the place. We must remember that these chemicals have been put into systems: not just our food and what we touch, or what we make things out of. There has been no FSA approval and there has been no FDA approval—it has just happened. All these chemicals are made by oil companies; plastic is a product of oil. Saudi Aramco is now the largest producer of plastic in the world, and production is growing as I speak.

Kids are thought to be particularly vulnerable; they have been found to have higher concentrations of PFAS in their blood than adults. One route of exposure is through the skin, and this brings me to the subject of school uniforms. They are often used in clothes to provide what they call “extra qualities”. So, if you get clothing that is “stain resistant” or “easy iron”—which, of course, is very tempting to someone on a time budget—these qualities in fact last for very little time. As you wash the clothes, they disappear, and then those chemicals end up in our watercourses. They are non-essential. There is no cost implication whatever to using them, apart from a gimmicky bit of advertising. I do not feel that the Minister really addressed this in Committee. Among other things, she said that

“the UK product safety laws require all consumer products to be safe, and manufacturers must ensure the safety of products before they are placed on the market”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 907.]

Turning this around, could the Minister update the House on whether the Government believe that the now overwhelming body of evidence that is emerging that PFAS is causing detrimental health outcomes is incorrect? Do the Government believe that the approach of our close neighbours, such as France and most of Europe, which have banned the use of over 10,000 substances, is in vain? At present, neither our product safety laws nor UK REACH is preventing harmful products being placed on the market. They are not working to protect children or adults.

In the summer, the Minister in Committee said there was work

“across government to help assess levels of PFAS occurring in the environment, their sources and potential risks, to inform policy and regulatory approaches”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 906.]

That was quite a long time ago. What work is being done, or are we just acknowledging a problem and not doing anything?

I appreciate that this is largely the responsibility of Defra, but it seems that our current approach is waiting for this disaster to happen. Would it not be more prudent to take steps at least to make schools and parents aware of this growing risk? An example of this is in Jersey—I appreciate that it is not part of the UK, but I happen to have been born there—where people are being treated with bloodletting, essentially leeching without leeches, because firefighting foam got into the watercourses and drinking water and filled them with PFAS. The state has taken some steps to reduce that, but, even then, our response was glacial.

I was disappointed that the revised environmental improvement plan, which was published before Christmas, said almost nothing about PFAS, but that the Government were

“investigating whether to restrict other PFAS in fire-fighting foams”.

I do not understand why we need to expend resources investigating what should be incredibly obvious. There was nothing about PFAS from other sources, and, unironically, the following paragraph said that we were a leader on chemical management. That is hard to believe. If this is the only work that the Government have done since Committee, I put it to the House that it is inadequate.

However, we have a chance here to make some small progress. This amendment would ban the use of PFAS in school uniforms. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause would set the limit for residual PFAS and textiles to

“no more than 50 mg”.

This would not allow producers to use a small amount of PFAS, because it is so prevalent in the water systems and in all our systems that you cannot—as was confirmed in the Netflix documentary that I watched last night—get the level back to zero. Noble Lords should find this fact alone really disturbing and I hope that it serves as an impetus. Our close neighbours in France and Denmark have banned the use of PFAS in all clothes, not just kids’ clothes. Indeed, in France’s case, it is banned much more widely, and there is an expectation that an EU ban will come quite soon.

While my amendment has been drafted within the confines of the Bill that we are debating, I urge the Minister to encourage her colleagues to match the EU’s approach, which is following the OECD’s definition of over 10,000 substances as PFAS and banning their use, rather than inventing our own definition and a new list. I accept that there is much about PFAS that we do not know for certain, but, as I say, I watched a Netflix documentary on this last night and, without a doubt, there is hard and fast evidence linking chemicals in our blood to declining birth rates, falling sperm counts and all sorts of other very complex medical situations.

I therefore ask for two things in the near term. First, can we change the statutory guidance that schools follow around considering

“sustainability and ethical supply chains, as well as engaging with parents and pupils when tendering for uniform contracts”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 907.]

Could something more specific be added to that guidance, so that the school uniform providers that are invited to tender must provide details of whether their garments contain PFAS? We are not saying “Remove it”: just put it on the label. Can a recommendation that schools aim to source school uniforms without PFAS possibly be included? If this is not possible, and they go ahead and contract a supplier whose uniform items contain PFAS, can those suppliers be required to label items so that schools and parents can make an informed decision? That is not going to cost us more money, and it is not just about saying that everything must be made of cotton. Cotton is obviously better, but cotton gets given stain-removal qualities and so on, which can also be bad. But this would put the responsibility fair and square on the producer.

Secondly, can the Government, at the very least, urgently consult on a wholesale ban of PFAS? If we do not, we risk becoming the dumping ground in Europe for all the school uniforms and other garments that the European Union is going to start rejecting and is starting to reject from now. That would be a very bad place to be.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who has powerfully made the case for Amendment 119. She referred to the Netflix documentary that we have not yet seen. I am going to go back a little further to a review article that came out in January last year, titled Effects of Early-life PFAS Exposure on Child Neurodevelopment: A Review of the Evidence and Research Gaps. It looked at 35 studies, most of which were in the previous five years. It found subtle but potentially very significant impacts of low-level exposure on population-wide neurodevelopment. What does that actually mean? It means reduced cognitive development and language development in infants and increased behavioural issues such as hyperactivity in childhood.

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[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a big change in the education service. I welcome the Government bringing this amendment, because it was not there in Committee and I think it is a response to speeches made on both sides of the House, so I want to put on record my thanks to the Minister and her team for working in between Committee and Report to give us something. It deserves a longer debate than it will get at this time of the night, so it is a shame that it has arrived so late.

I want to seek one reassurance. It must get the prize for the longest amendment because it is pages long. But it also gets the prize for the longest amendment that does not say very much. That is basically the first question I want to ask. Will the Minister give assurance that we will have opportunity to discuss the detail of this? It is a big change, and some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, need to be addressed. Secondly, and this is the most important thing for me, could the Minister give an assurance that she will endeavour to make the inspection such that schools do not feel they have been inspected twice, and that it is an inspection of the MAT ownership or governance and not the schools themselves?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak chiefly to Amendment 196A in my name and to Amendment 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I also attached my name. Given the hour, I am going to restrain myself on a lot of things. It is a great pity that we are doing this important business at this hour. The Minister, in introducing this group, talked about the need to improve the accountability of multi-academy trusts, which has not kept pace with the growth of MATs. We have heard agreement on that from right across the House. With that in mind, I am going to start with Amendment 197, which we have not yet heard the formal introduction of. I will not go through it in detail, but it looks at the remuneration of chief executives of multi-academy trusts. It includes the provision, under parliamentary scrutiny, to impose limits on that pay.

It might be a difficult job, but I think I am about to shock the House at 11.23 pm. A few days ago, the website Education Uncovered produced some figures on the pay of CEOs of multi-academy trusts—not the biggest ones but the group of the next biggest ones, ranked from 11 to 25 on the number of pupils. A £220,000 salary is becoming standard for these multi-academy trust CEOs—and you can add a pension of about £50,000. This is significantly more than the Prime Minister is paid. We have a fat-cat pay problem right across our society, but here we are talking about public funds allocated for children’s education going to fat-cat pay.

I said that the Education Uncovered figure was for 2025. For the largest trusts, I had to go back to a Schools Week investigation from last March looking at some of the highest pay, and a year ago the CEO’s pay at one of the multi-academy trusts had crossed the £500,000 a year threshold, while three more were on more than £300,000 a year. Unsurprisingly, the National Governance Association told Schools Week that benchmarking seemed to be leading to inflationary pressure—something some noble Lords here who know quite a bit about the financial sector have seen happening. It really is obscene that this is happening in our schools.

The Education Uncovered study shows that the larger trusts are spending more per pupil on these highly paid staff and less per pupil on pupils in the classroom than are smaller trusts and, particularly in England, local authorities and local authority schools. This is a huge problem of accountability, and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on bringing forward this amendment and seeking to deal with it. I cannot think of a reason why the Government would not think this a good idea.

I come now—very briefly, given the hour—to my Amendment 196. This follows attempts that I made in Committee, with the assistance of the National Education Union, to create something that would allow schools to get out of this mess when they are just fed up with it. It would allow parents fed up with multi-academy trusts that are not working—we have seen a lot of examples recently of multi-academy trusts imposing on local school communities disciplinary rules that have caused a great deal of upset, concern and fear for the well-being of pupils—a way to get schools out of this system that is not working for them.

In Committee, I brought forward the idea of an academy reversal order. It is very complex, given that schools in multi-academy trusts no longer have their own legal entity, but I made an attempt at doing that. I also attempted to say that it was a duty of the Secretary of State to produce an order like that.

Now, on Report, with Amendment 196A I am calling for the Government to create a duty for them to produce a report on the demand for, desirability of and mechanisms for the conversion of academy-run schools to maintained schools, within two years of the Act calling for a report. That would not direct anything to happen, but it asks for a direction to the Government to think again, in a Bill that already acknowledges that there are huge problems with the academy trust model, ends the presumption that all new schools must be academies and removes the duty to force schools into multi-academy trusts. We are clearly heading in that direction. Let us get ahead of the game and prepare for a future where we put schools back under local democratic control.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, regarding the amendments by my noble friend Lord Storey, research has shown no correlation between the pay of the CEOs of multi-academy trusts and the schools they have responsibility for. I hope the Minister can say whether there will be a mechanism to look at the pay of some of these highly paid officials and what responsibilities they have. There could be cases where people have responsibility for eight to 10 schools but get paid more than people with responsibility for higher numbers. That does not seem fair or right. I know it is late, but I thought it important that I raise this point on behalf of my noble friend.