Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 193 in this group is also in my name. I say again how pleased I am that the Labour Government have broadened the eligibility for free school meals. However, much still needs to be done, particularly on the quality of the meals and the enforcement of the standards, which needed reviewing anyway—that was the subject of Amendment 190, debated last week—and to ensure that all eligible children get their meal. In recent years the whole issue of school meals has been left to flounder, despite their importance to children’s health, and I am pleased that the Government are now picking it up again.

Amendment 189 calls for an annual review, with the results to be laid before Parliament, of the barriers to all eligible children receiving their free school meal, and clarification of how many eligible children are missing out. The review must assess how many children are eligible, under whatever the current threshold is, and how many would be eligible if the threshold had been uprated since 2018. It must also assess how many would be eligible if the threshold were to be set at £20,000 per year after tax. Because of the inequalities that we know about, the review would have to cover regional and demographic disparities in take-up rates and the financial and educational impact on schools and local authorities, bearing in mind that a child on free school meals currently brings the pupil premium with him or her to the school for education purposes. That set of reviews would give us more information about how the system was working and would form a very useful underpinning for the development of policy in future.

Amendment 193 would ensure the auto-enrolment of all children eligible for free school meals and expand eligibility even further than the recent change to households whose income is less than £20,000 per year after tax. That would be yet another step in the right direction. I know that the Secretary of State, in making the recent announcement that all children in families on universal credit will be eligible for free school meals next year, claimed that this simpler system will make it easier for families to register. However, it is still not the same as auto-enrolment, and schools as well as families are losing out because they are losing the pupil premium that comes with FSM.

The evidence to the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee was clear that there are many children who would become eligible, under whatever threshold, who may not get their free school meal, such as it is, and that there are many children in poverty whose parents struggle to pay for a hot meal for their children. These parents or families, eligible but not registered for FSM, often send the child to school with a packed lunch of dubious nutritional value—we were given several examples—not because they do not care about their children’s health but because they cannot afford the price of a decent packed lunch or a hot meal. It is these unregistered families, and those just above the eligibility threshold, who suffer the most from regulations.

Free school meals, and breakfasts, are one of the most important levers that the Government have to ensure that, however poor the parents, however lacking their cooking facilities at home, whatever kind of food desert the family live in, the children can get two healthy meals every school day—if they also get a free breakfast—to ensure that they grow up strong and a healthy weight, with no rotting teeth and no wrong food preferences to take through life and make them susceptible to obesity. I hope the Government will agree with these amendments, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendments 191 and 192 are in my name and are closely related to that already introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for offering her support to my amendments.

Amendment 191 is essentially a different way of getting to the same intention as Amendment 193. We are aiming to get auto-enrolment so that every child who is eligible for free school meals gets them, and surely that is something that the Government want to do. I have no particular opinion on whether Amendment 191 or Amendment 193 is the best way to do it; we can debate that after this point, although I would love to hear the Government say, “We want to do this and we’re going to do it, so you don’t have to worry about this on Report”.

The best stats on the previous form of free school meals, before the Government’s recent extension, showed that up to 250,000 children, or about 11% of those eligible for free school meals, missed out because it is an opt-in process. That is a point that my honourable friend Ellie Chowns in the other place has already highlighted, so I will not go through it in great detail. However, I will note that the Fix Our Food research programme showed that it is children from non-majority communities and lone-parent households who are more likely not to be registered for free school meals despite being eligible. Inequalities here multiply themselves time and again.

Reasons the charity give for this include parents struggling to fill out the complex forms, language barriers or that there may be a simple lack of awareness. There may also be stigma around free school meals. I hope the Committee will join me in saying there is no reason why there should be, but the practical reality is that we know there is. I also note that the Greater London Authority has put resources into auto-enrolment, showing that it is possible to make a difference, but around the rest of the country that is not available.

I come back to my point about stigma, because Amendment 192 would extend free school lunches to all primary schoolchildren in state-funded schools. I will quote a question that was put to me by a year 7 pupil from Lordswood Boys’ School in Birmingham this morning—and, no, I did not put him up to it; it was not prompted in any way. Some other questions identified me as a representative of the Government and I had to correct that misapprehension, but he simply said to me: “Why don’t we get free school meals?” That is something that shows a really high level of awareness. People feel the inequality and suffering that has come from the lack of those free school meals.

Amendment 192, which the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has kindly backed, would not actually help that year 7 boy. This is me and the Green Party going for the moderate, middle-of-the-road option, because Green Party policy is free school meals for all school pupils, which would help that pupil in Birmingham. What we have here is simply an amendment for all primary school pupils, and part of the reason for that is the example from London of how positive it has been.

I note that an evaluation of this has been conducted already to see what has happened. There has been a lived-experience evaluation by the Child Poverty Action Group and an implementation evaluation as well. This policy, unsurprisingly, was really popular and had a very high level of take up—between 88% and 90% across three school terms. Among the positive outcomes, 84% of parents said it had improved the family budget. One-third of parents said that the policy meant they had less debt. Three in five parents said they were able to spend more money on food at home as a result. We talk so often in your Lordships’ House about our broken food system and how it is so difficult to get a healthy diet.

There are more positives. More than half of parents thought their child was trying new foods as a result of being exposed to them at school. This is the kind of thing we might not think about, but more than half of parents said that it saved them time in the morning that they had been forced to use making packed lunches. We all know that can make a real difference to families. More than one-third of parents thought their children were concentrating better in lessons as a result.

This is a moderate challenge to the Government to look at what has been achieved in London. We know the levels of inequality between London and the rest of the county. Let us break down that inequality and make it better, at least for our primary school pupils.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to various amendments concerning free school meals. Much as I welcome the Bill’s provision for free breakfasts, there remains a strong case for complementing them with free school dinners. I will scrap half of my speech to save time.

This case was summarised well by the Food Foundation:

“School food has the power to enable not just better health and wellbeing, but improved attendance, better pupil outcomes and wider social benefits including reduced inequalities. Free School Meals can break down barriers to opportunity and level the playing field so that every child can have the best start in life”.


In a nutshell, children who have free school meals are healthier and happier and do better in school, as well as later in life.

The amendments would thus contribute to both parts of this Bill: children’s well-being and their ability to benefit from their education. I therefore warmly welcome the recent announcement of the extension of free school meals to all children in families on universal credit from next September, with transitional protection associated with the roll out of universal credit lasting until then.

I will ask one small question and, if it cannot be answered now, perhaps it can be answered in writing. I understand that, if someone is on universal credit at the start of the school year, they will retain entitlement for the whole of that school year, in recognition of the fluctuating circumstances of many on low incomes. Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that that is the case and also say whether someone whose parent comes on to universal credit during the school year will still be entitled? When we debated the Statement, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti made an impassioned plea on human rights grounds that we might one day aspire to universal free school meals—an ambition that my noble friend the Minister noted.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I also support Amendment 194 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others. It is very specific as to what makes healthy school food and drink. The committee that I chaired recommended that only water and milk be provided in schools, instead of a whole lot of fizzy drinks from machines. Amendment 194 also recommends a regular review of the standard, which I very much support. I beg to move Amendment 161.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I attached my name to Amendment 161 on automatic enrolment for the Healthy Start scheme, as indeed did the noble Lord, Bethell—so if we are looking for broad, cross-party-political spectrums, this is one of those.

The noble Baroness has already set out the powerful case for this amendment—I will just add one thing. She spoke about the Government’s apparent lack of data in this area. In the other place, my honourable friends asked the Government a whole series of questions about this. The response was that the NHS Business Services Authority, which operates the scheme, does not hold any data on the number of people eligible. That is surely fixable, so it should surely be fixed.

I will focus on Amendment 175 in my name, which is kindly supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. It would insert a new clause to provide for

“holiday … and activity programmes for pupils in receipt of free school meals”.

This would be a lot of pupils. Before the Government’s recent changes, about one in four pupils were already eligible for free school meals. Those were extremely tight criteria; the Government have now opened them up a little. There is some debate about the number of children affected. None the less, these are children whom the Government have acknowledged, and most of whom the previous Government acknowledged, really need the support of hopefully healthy—I will get back to that—hot meals during term time.

However, what happens at weekends? There is a reason why #HolidayHunger has almost become a cliché. Those children come from families whose budgets are at the absolute edge anyway. Then, the holidays come, and they cannot be guaranteed to be fed.

This amendment would also ensure that there are activities and programmes relevant to those children during the school holidays. One thing we have seen in many of our areas, particularly some of our poorest areas, is that the availability of free activities during the school holidays has fallen and fallen. We have seen the privatisation of public spaces, the fencing-in of playing fields and the removal of public spaces that then become privatised and can be quite hostile to children. If you go out and you need access to a loo, you have to buy something, and that is just not available to people. So, this amendment would ensure that there is a meal and a holiday programme that supports those children and those families. It is tackling poverty and tackling some of the very acute issues of public health that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to.

I note, declaring my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, that this would have to be funded from the centre. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred, I think, to difficulties with the free school breakfast programme and how some schools have had to pull out of it because they did not have the funding. Certainly, local government would really struggle to fund the proposal in this amendment, but I would argue to the Government that the relatively modest costs would be far outweighed by the benefits for public health of the inclusion of some of the poorest children in our communities, giving them a space that is constructive when otherwise they might be spending their time in potentially destructive ways.

I think it is worth noting that this is not just something that I have dreamed up. My honourable friend in the other place, Ellie Chowns, tabled a similar amendment. We have only to go to the Republic of Ireland, which quite recently announced a programme for the coming year that looks remarkably like this: activity programmes for two to four weeks aimed at the children at most risk of disadvantage and those with complex special educational needs. In Ireland, 58,000 pupils took part last year and they are expecting more next year, so this is something that a very broadly comparable society is already doing, acknowledging the need and acting on it.

Finally, there are a huge number of positive amendments in this group, and I am not going to speak to anything like all of them, but I particularly want to highlight Amendment 190, to which I would have attached my name had I got my act together, and Amendment 194, to which I would have attached my name if it were not already fully subscribed. Both are about the quality of school breakfasts and lunches, which is so crucial. I make one general point in this context. The Times Health Commission reported recently and it had a really interesting look at Japan and what a contrast Japan shows compared to us. In Japan, just 4% of adults are obese, compared to 26% here. In Japan, fewer than 2% of under-fives are overweight: they are essentially all at a healthy weight.

What we have is school systems. The Times journalists visited the school system and saw what school lunches are like at Kohoku primary school. The children were eating spiced baked fish and vegetables sprinkled with dried bonito and rice and they were ladling out the food themselves. A pupil got up at the start and explained why the sweetcorn in the rice had a beneficial nutritional advantage. The school is built around a giant kitchen with windows on every side, so pupils can see the chefs preparing the meal.

I wanted to say that because I was reflecting on the Committee’s debate a couple of days ago, when we were talking about children’s social care and I had an amendment that said we should end for-profit provision in children’s social care. It struck me when I read Hansard afterwards that nobody had actually defended the idea of a market in private provision of social care. All the people speaking against my amendment said, “Oh, well, we are where we are now and it’s too difficult to change”. I think that when it comes to free school meals or school meals—on a later group I am going to say that there should be school meals for everybody—we have to say that this needs a giant leap of change. We cannot allow this to continue as it is now. We have to have the imagination to think, yes, we are in a bad place, but we can do significantly, massively better than this, not just try to have a little improvement.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I shall be brief, because the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has set out comprehensively so much about the amendments that I support, Amendments 175 and 194. Amendment 175 echoes what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said about the need for “holiday hunger” to be sorted out in this country. For a parent the summer holidays are a cliff edge in all sorts of directions. Not only are you deprived of the possible childcare while struggle with your two jobs, your mortgage and so on, but your children are also deprived of possibly the only decent meal that they might get in the day—and I shall qualify the word “decent” when I come back to it in a minute.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 117, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler and others. The decision on where a child is cared for in the system is crucial to the child’s life, so we should listen to children with care experience. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, it may affect their ability to keep contact with wider family and friends, and other factors were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. It will make a difference even to their ability to keep in contact with a teacher who they might trust—that can be quite important in children’s lives. It can otherwise be very disruptive to their education if they are put a long way from where they previously went to school. As we know, children with care experience usually have less of a chance to get good educational qualifications than other children, and that has an effect on their whole-life chances.

As my noble friend says, it cannot be left to the Secretary of State under the title of “such other persons”. The category of those most directly affected by these regulations must be named in the Bill, and it is vital that children have the confidence that they will be heard. The slogan, “Nothing about us without us”, is very apt in this context.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since we are forming a set for Amendment 117, I will stand up now, having attached my name to it, and will focus chiefly on that amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has stolen my starting line with her final line: nothing about us without us. I first used that phrase in a debate on rather similar amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill. I think that your Lordships’ House and the country are increasingly coming to realise that we have to listen to children far more.

In this context, I will cite an interesting case from the past week, where a 14 year-old who had been tricked by his parents into going to Ghana took his parents to court. The Court of Appeal ruled that he should have the right to come back to Britain, as he wanted to do. That is an interesting court case that shows how, generally, our legal system is starting to listen more and more to children. It is important that our legislation does so and that that is in the Bill.

This raises issues that I will come back to on a later group, but the basic point about the regional care co-operatives is that they will take decision-making further away from local authorities. People have been studying this, and the care review evidence group, for example, said that

“care will need to be taken that these structural reforms do not dilute local accountability mechanisms”.

Making sure that children are actually heard in the making of regulations is in some way a counterbalance to the risk that quite a lot of experts have identified in taking this approach.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 116A, 117A and 119ZA in my name. As we have heard, the proposals to create regional care co-operatives came from the independent review into children’s social care. In principle, we support them. However, we are aware that a number of regions are already using informal co-operation agreements, so I question whether we need more legislation to make this happen. Maybe the Minister can comment on this when she sums up. The Secretary of State is taking the power to direct areas to create one of three models of co-operation, but it is important that we understand how this will work in practice, because, presumably, if areas are not adopting this approach voluntarily, there would be significant barriers and potentially good reasons for doing so. Can the Minister clarify those few points when she closes?

The Local Government Association has stated its support for the narrower requirements of a regional care co-operative, as being used by the pathfinder areas —namely, on

“strategic planning and placements for children with more complex needs”.

However, the Bill states in proposed new Section 22J(3)(c) that regional care co-operatives will be responsible for commissioning

“the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority”.

There is a real worry about mission creep and confusion over responsibilities, which I have tried to address through my Amendment 119ZA, as has my noble friend Lady Cash through her Amendment 117B.

Will the Minister comment on the concern expressed by organisations such as Barnardo’s that this model will squeeze out some of the smaller providers, increasing even further the dependence on independent providers in the private sector, many of whom, as we know, have a combination of very high profitability and high debts?

Can the Minister confirm the start date for the pathfinders, and when there will be publicly available evidence from them, either via the evaluation or from any other data? Does the department have an idea that it can publicly share of the likely size of each of the areas? The two pilot sites, Greater Manchester and the south-east, are both very large, with about 3 million people within them. Is that the size the Government expect to be typical?

Amendment 116A would remove a power equivalent to a Henry VIII power from the Bill. Clause 10(2) defines strategic accommodation functions as

“(a) assessing current and future requirements for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority,


(b) developing and publishing strategies for meeting those requirements,


(c) commissioning the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority,


(d) recruiting prospective local authority foster parents and supporting local authority foster parents,


(e) developing, or facilitating the development of, new provision for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority, and


(f) any other functions relating to a local authority’s duties under section 22A, 22C or 22G that are specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.


New Section 22J(3)(f) gives the Secretary of State a power akin to a Henry VIII power to add to the above list of strategic accommodation functions by regulations. In justifying the power, the department goes on to say:

“The Department has sought to achieve the right balance between confining the scope of the delegated powers through primary provisions and leaving necessary matters of detail to regulations. This is the first time the Secretary of State has sought to bring local authorities together to collaborate in the delivery of their strategic accommodation functions. Regional co-operation arrangements (known as Regional Care Co-operatives) … are currently being tested via pathfinders … in two local authority regions. When the pathfinders are evaluated, the Secretary of State may need to prescribe additional functions. There may also be a need for additional functions to be specified in the future depending on the needs of a particular area and to keep pace with the changing children’s social care placements market. The power has been limited to one which enables additional functions to be added to the list in the future. It does not enable the Secretary of State to amend or remove any of the functions already listed in the clause and so it is not a Henry VIII power”.


My amendment is a probing amendment, as this feels like another example of the Government introducing legislation before they are quite ready. Why not wait until the pathfinders are evaluated to be clear what additional strategic functions might be needed? Maybe the Minister can inform the House if the department is aware of any gaps in the current strategic powers that have been identified in areas using this approach already. It would be good to understand whether the Government have in mind any particular powers that might be needed, or whether this is a belt and braces, “just in case” kind of power, without having anything particular in mind.

My Amendment 117A seeks to ensure that Ofsted inspects regional care co-operatives. It is obviously important that we have an independent assessment of their effectiveness and impact and whether they are achieving the Government’s goals—and, perhaps even more importantly, the needs of children. There may be other ways of achieving this and, if so, it would be helpful to understand what those are.

More specifically, my amendment aims to bring a spotlight on the use of unregistered provision. My understanding of the regional care co-operative approach is that it will anticipate and commission capacity in a more effective, and cost-effective, way. One outcome of this would be a drop in or complete removal of the use of unregistered provision, something I know local authorities are keen to see, as are noble many Lords across the House.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 165, but as three noble Lords have already spoken to it, I will be brief. I declare my involvement with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation.

Here is one stat to feed into our debate. In the year to September 2024, 80 children who were in temporary accommodation died, and the figures from the National Child Mortality Database from 2019 to 2024 show that, for children who died, temporary accommodation was listed as a causal factor in their death in 74 cases. That obviously speaks to the GP issue.

Many noble Lords—I can see quite a few in this Chamber—take part in Learn with the Lords, the House of Lords education programme. We have many new Members of the House, so I want to take this chance to commend to all the newer Members who may not know about it what a great programme it is. One of the things we are doing is taking news about the House of Lords out around the country into schools, but it is also a chance to encounter and speak to teachers and head teachers, and share with them what we are doing here in your Lordships’ House and get their reaction.

I have not got permission, so I will not identify the person too clearly, but in the Midlands I was speaking to a head teacher at a school serving a very deprived area and I told her about this amendment, and she just went, “Yes!” Many people might think that surely the school will already know, but children and parents may feel that this is a cause of shame. There is no reason why they should, but none the less, the reality is that they may well feel it is a cause of shame, and go to great lengths to try to hide the fact. So it is important that the school, as well as the GP, be notified.

As we have had a huge outbreak of agreement, I shall briefly express my reservations about Amendment 119, about boarding school places. Joy Schaverien, the therapist, wrote a book, whose subtitle is The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child, reflecting on the impact of boarding schools on British society. Indeed, we might all reflect on their impact on our politics, but that is a subject for another day. She identified issues of abandonment, bereavement, captivity and disassociation associated with boarding schools.

I am sure that boarding schools today would say that things are different now from what it was like in the old days, but we are still talking about an institutional environment. That, by definition, is what a boarding school is. It is not a home environment. I would not say that there would never be a case where a boarding school might be an appropriate place for a child; there may be cases in which that is the best option available, given the overall circumstances. But I have trouble with the idea of offering it to all looked-after children at secondary age. I do not think that is the appropriate approach.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 134B, in the name of my noble friend Lady Sanderson. As she said, it seeks to build on the Government’s commitment in Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive to look at options to reform the planning process to enable providers to more easily set up homes where they are most needed and to support the delivery of small children’s homes.

To pick up another issue that noble Lords across the Committee have raised on this group of amendments, I should add that that paper also noted that the lack of appropriate and affordable homes in the right places for children means that we are seeing a worrying trend in the rise of the use of unregistered provision.

The CMA’s 2022 report on the children’s home market outlined a number of issues with the current planning system and specifically recommended that the Government do what my noble friend suggests in her amendment, and consider

“whether the distinction, for the purposes of the planning regime, between small children’s homes and domestic dwelling houses should be removed”.

The CMA concluded that the easing of planning restrictions would lead to both an increase in number and a better geographical spread of children’s homes.

On the basis that the Government have accepted this recommendation and say that they are considering options, I look forward to hearing from the Minister how government thinking has developed, particularly in relation to further planning reforms in this area. Can she outline where, if not in this Bill, they may be intending to take their action?

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendment 131, in my name, appears in this group. I will not quite say that it is a pleasure to follow the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, but it was a terribly important contribution, and I can only very much agree with what she said. The issues that she has outlined—about children as young as seven, with two-thirds continuing still at six months—are hugely disturbing.

My amendment seeks to address a particular issue concerning children subject to deprivation of liberty orders and children in care in general. As I said to the Ministers when they very kindly had a briefing on the Bill, this arises from a campaign that I encountered in 2023, called Hope Instead of Handcuffs. This campaign came from a small group of people—a single operator of the provision of secure transport for children—who were calling for a ban on the automatic use of handcuffs. Yes, I did say the automatic use of handcuffs, which some privatised providers of secure transport were using on children who were subject to deprivation of liberty orders—or who, as it was described, were on the edges of care. They were being put in handcuffs to be transported. These are not children who have been accused of any crime; these are simply children—very vulnerable children, obviously—who have been subjected to something that I think any of us would find traumatic and disturbing.

This reflects testimony that was given in 2021 to the inquiry of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on protecting rights in care settings. Serenity Welfare testified that, as I have just said, many providers of secure transportation services for children who were on the edge of care were using handcuffs as standard. I quote from its testimony:

“The practice is unregulated and unmonitored, as there is no obligation on these providers to report any instances of handcuffing to the appropriate authority”.


As a result of that campaign in 2023, I and a number of other Members of both Houses wrote to the Government inquiring what was happening. The response we got was, “We will look into it”. To the best of my knowledge, none of this has progressed since then, so I particularly wanted to put down this probing amendment to draw attention to the issue.

I have not addressed just transport, because I want to know what is happening in other settings for these children as well, which is why I have included them in the amendment. This is perhaps a much more limited issue than the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was outlining, but I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government are planning to do something about it if, as I have no reason to doubt, it is still continuing, and to stop it.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 126, in my name, is in this group. This amendment relates to a discreet issue for children who are under a High Court deprivation of liberty order but who are not also looked-after children under the Children Act. Approximately 96% of those children under a High Court deprivation of liberty order are also looked-after children under the Children Act, but then they end up at the High Court, as there is a shortage of Section 25 secure accommodation. Only in Section 25 accommodation under the Children Act can a looked-after child be restricted of their liberty—that currently means a secure children’s home—so they are also put under a High Court DoL so that the local authority can deprive them of their liberty in non-Section-25-type accommodation. It seems that by the move to the phrasing “relevant accommodation” the Bill will regularise in law their situation, which is that 96% of these young people are currently under that inherent jurisdiction deprivation of liberty order. However, there are currently 4% of children under a High Court deprivation of liberty order who are not also looked-after children under the Children Act.

I want to thank the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane. I believe that it was his work that brought in the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, when High Court DoLS—as we would call them—began to be used as a jurisdiction. It is due only to that work that we know that, within that group, we have this little group—the 4%—who are not also looked-after children. Even an amended Section 25 of the Children Act refers only to looked-after children having their liberty being restricted in what would now be known as “relevant accommodation”. They would still be left under the High Court jurisdiction, with fewer safeguards. The whole purpose of Clause 11 is to bring from the inherent jurisdiction these children under a statutory system of protection, safeguards and reviews.

This 4% of around 1,280 children last year are often children coming out of the mental health estate. They have been taken into hospital for their own protection and for treatment; then they are discharged but, for health reasons, their home is no longer suitable. In my view, they are not going to pass the threshold test under the Children Act 1989 to be a looked-after child, because the threshold test—philosophically and in practice—is about harm by the care or neglect of the adult who should be caring for them or the fact of their being out of control. Neither of those circumstances seem in most cases to apply to a young person who has gone into the mental health estate and then been discharged.

While I recognise the imperfections of the current drafting of Amendment 126—for instance, it might trigger other provisions of the Children Act if we deem these children to be looked after-children—I chose that mechanism to try to bring them under the safeguards that we will have for children under Section 25 who are looked-after children, and not leave them still to be under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. I hope that that serves to be a mechanism for the Minister to explain what the situation is for that small group of children.

I imagine it was envisaged by Sir Andrew McFarlane that he would get the data through the Nuffield work, so that we would come to Parliament, legislate and take this into statute law, out of the inherent jurisdiction. It seems to me, from Amendment 126, that unless we do something for this small group of children, he is going to have to continue needing Nuffield, because there will be a need for this type of deprivation of liberty order under the inherent jurisdiction for the group of children I have just outlined.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I will clarify that in the letter.

On Amendment 131 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on the important matter of the use of restraint on children in care and subject to deprivation of liberty orders, it is vital that children are safe and that restraint is used only where appropriate, including when they are moving between settings and services. We take these concerns very seriously. We will consider guidance on restraint in due course.

However, the question about children being handcuffed remains, and I will endeavour to get more detail about that and to come back to the noble Baroness. Providers, in conjunction with placing authorities, are under an obligation to use the minimum appropriate restriction to keep a child safe.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I may be a little too soon, but I wonder whether the Government are minded to ensure that there is, as my amendment would provide, some kind of reporting mechanism to keep track of things. There may be cases where that is necessary. Surely this is something there should be an annual report on so that we can see the direction of travel and whether there is a problem that needs to be tackled.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Noble Lords are very premature today. I was coming not quite to that but to something that I hope will be satisfactory in relation to that reporting mechanism.

Ofsted, as the independent regulator of children’s homes, manages incidents of restraint on a case-by-case basis under its inspection framework. The children’s homes regulations place a requirement on homes to record any incidents of restraint and on the registered person to inform Ofsted of any incident in relation to a child that they consider to be serious. We think that Ofsted inspectors are best placed to scrutinise individual incidents of restraint and the circumstances around them and to ensure that care providers are minimising its use. We are not clear that a yearly report to Parliament aggregating that data would add anything in this case, although it would create an additional burden and risk distraction from this important work. It would, in fact, probably be significantly less effective in safeguarding children and recording the incidents than the Ofsted approach currently being used.

Amendment 133 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, seeks to promote family and other social relationships for children subject to deprivation of liberty orders by publishing local authority plans to support children in that regard. As mentioned in respect of earlier amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, I reiterate the Government’s agreement that, wherever possible, it is vital for a child’s welfare to have positive family and social relationships. Given that the Children Act 1989 and the supporting guidance already seek to ensure that family and other relationships for looked-after children are promoted while keeping children safe, and that this forms part of Ofsted’s inspections of local authorities, I am not sure it is appropriate or necessary to increase the burden on local authorities by mandating them to publish that information. I recognise the points made by the noble Lord, or it may have been somebody else speaking on his behalf, about the effectiveness of the lifelong links programme. I think we referenced that previously, and I can see the enormous benefit that can come from it.

Amendment 134C tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to ensure the affirmative procedure for regulations made under Section 25 of the Children Act 1989. I agree with the noble Baroness that it is important to ensure that regulations on this matter are subject to the correct scrutiny. She referred to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report in which this was raised. We are grateful to the committee for its scrutiny. We are carefully considering its recommendations and will respond in due course.

Amendment 506B in the name of my noble friend Lord Watson seeks to delay commencement of Clause 11 until regulations are made to ensure that non-means-tested legal aid is available in relation to applications to deprive a child of their liberty under Section 25 of the Children Act 1989. I assure my noble friend that where an application is made to deprive a child of their liberty as a result of any measure the Bill brings forward, those children will be eligible for state-funded legal aid representation using the same criteria that currently apply to all children subject to orders under Section 25. This means that children will be able to access legal aid without needing to satisfy means testing.

I hope that noble Lords think I have provided nearly all the detail requested in these amendments. On that basis, I commend the government amendments to the Committee and hope that noble Lords feel able not to press theirs.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 140, in my name, and I thank my noble friend Lord Storey for adding his. It would extend the scope of Clause 14 to cover independent providers of supported accommodation. This is a really important group of amendments: the whole area of financial oversight and profit caps is incredibly important, and I suspect we are not all going to have exactly the same views on it.

To put things into context, I welcome the raft of measures in the Bill to strengthen regulation and oversight of the care system, particularly the new provider oversight measures, Ofsted’s new power to fine providers of unregistered children’s homes, the financial oversight mechanism, and the profit cap. I firmly believe that these measures are welcome steps in the right direction in addressing some of the structural problems facing the care system and the sort of issues we have talked about so often in this Chamber: excessively high profit levels and rising care costs, at a time when local authorities are under huge financial pressure; the power imbalance between local authority commissioners and the largest private providers; the risk of sudden market exits due to high debt burdens from private equity-backed providers; and the growth in unregistered children’s homes, which we have already rightly focused on. That is a pretty toxic mix, and we really have to take the opportunity the Bill provides to do something about it.

That is the big picture, but turning briefly to my amendment, as we have already heard, in the last six years there has been a very significant rise in the number of children in care aged 16 and 17 who are living in supported accommodation. It is important to be clear what we mean by supported accommodation. It is for young people, 16 and 17 year-olds, who may have already started to make some sort of transition to more independent living but who still require a fair degree of support. Many supported accommodation settings, such as children’s homes and foster homes, are run by private companies, many of which are very large. Local authorities currently have no way of knowing the debt level being carried by these large private companies and whether there is any risk of the company or provider failing financially—which, of course, could have drastic implications for the children living in these settings. So, given the significant and growing number of children living in supported accommodation, it is important that the new financial oversight measures in Clause 14 are extended to independent providers of supported accommodation as well as providers of children’s homes and fostering agencies. My amendment would achieve this, and in so doing would provide a consistent approach across the different care settings and a safeguard for local authorities, so they can identify and mitigate the risk of providers suddenly closing multiple supported accommodation settings.

Finally, nine times out of 10, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I agree on pretty much everything. We often support each other’s amendments and speak in the same debates, but I do not quite share her position on removing the profit motive altogether from children’s social care. Far more needs to be done to regulate it, but there is a place for the private sector in the children’s social care market; it just has to be properly regulated.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler—whether I agree with her or not. I note the phrase that she used, “toxic mix”.

I think there has been broad agreement around the Chamber, including on the Government Benches, that we have a huge problem. The Minister said on one of the earlier groups that the market has prevent local authorities meeting their duties. Here, I would stress the phrase “the market”. What I am postulating is that “the market” is not the appropriate way to ensure that we have the right care in the right places with the right services—and that is a statement of a Green Party philosophical position. We do not believe that profit should be made from any form of care.

In this case, that is also very clear from what people have been saying. The Minister also said on one of the earlier groups that the current market has driven us to this, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said that the market is clearly not working. So, yes, it is my ideological position, but I have an overwhelming argument here for saying that the market is just the wrong model for providing this sort of care for vulnerable young people and children.

My Amendment 174 proposes a new clause that would prohibit the delivery of children’s social care services by for-profit companies. It has two very simple provisions, the first being that any new institutions created under the Bill should be not for profit. It says that within five years of the Bill being passed, what is now for profit would be converted. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, rightly said, this follows the model of what has already happened in Wales. I acknowledge that Wales is smaller than England, but none the less Wales has shown the way. It is worth looking at why Wales went that way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash (Con)]

Transparency is a good start. I think it is the case, and I know there are vastly different prices charged around the country, perhaps for different reasons, property prices or whatever; but I think transparency is key. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington: I think that trying to interfere in markets is generally dangerous and you generally have unintended consequences. Everybody knows that I am a career venture-capital private-equity guy, but I do know that these assets are completely out of favour.

There are a number of groups that have these assets and cannot sell them, and we are just going to run out of money, so I think the Government need to be very careful. I say that as somebody who is very concerned about this sector, and that is why I am here. I do not have any magic solutions, but I think that, if people are threatened with fines, who is going to want to run these homes? Individuals. It is something that needs to be thought about very carefully.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Lord has just essentially agreed with what I said, that some of these entities are financially unstable and uncertain. Would the noble Lord understand, at least, the argument that it is better to bring these back? These facilities are going to have to stay open: we need them. It is better to bring them back into non-profit hands in an orderly manner rather than, if one of these private equity companies goes down, having an immediate crisis. What do the Government do then?

[Lord Nash (Con)]

The care sector is slightly different, for the reasons people have mentioned. But what are we going to do—nationalise it for nothing? Are we going to become a communist country? Are we going to pay for it, and if so, where will that money come from? Anyway, even if you deal with the ownership issue—obviously, I do not agree with the idea of nationalisation—threatening people who operate them with fines just does not seem reasonable. That is why I support the amendments on limiting fines and not applying them to natural persons, as opposed to corporations.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, will remind your Lordships’ Committee that an extension of Staying Put to age 23, as proposed by the MacAlister report, was committed to by the previous Government in their response to MacAlister, though of course it was never actually introduced. I say to my noble friend the Minister: please do not allow this Bill to be a missed opportunity to provide support for care leavers by extending the Staying Put scheme to enable children in foster care to remain with their former foster carer beyond the age of 21. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Watson, having attached my name to all the amendments in this group that include extending Staying Put support for young people up to the age of 25. The noble Lord has already made the case very well, so I will not repeat all the stats and the recommendations that we had from the MacAlister report et cetera, but it is worth reflecting on how hard it is today for young people to be independent at the age of 21. The Office for National Statistics report last year showed that, across our society, the average age at which a child moves out of their family home is 24. Surely the state should also be providing the kind of care that children are getting in families.

I also have a genuine question that I have not been able to establish the answer to. These amendments and the Government’s plans cover both children in foster care and those in institutional arrangements. My understanding is that about 40% of 17 year-olds are staying in unregulated or independent accommodation, and it would appear that at the moment they are falling through the cracks and not being covered by either these amendments or what is happening here, so I would like to ask the Minister whether that is indeed the case and whether the Government have plans to act on that.

It is perhaps worth setting out the kind of story of what is happening now, which I doubt anyone in this Chamber would disagree is unacceptable. Last year the Big Issue reported on the case of a young man called Duncan, who was in care with a foster family that he had been with since age 11. He came home from college one day and found that all his bags had been packed up. It was a week after he turned 18. The foster carers were happy for him to stay, but social services simply said that was not an option and could not happen, and packed his bags up. Think about how utterly damaging that would be. Duncan was then put into supported accommodation. At 3 am the next morning, someone was knocking on his door looking for somebody else. There was drug dealing happening all around him. He had a bottle flung in his face by someone who was trying to throw it to someone else in that supported accommodation. That is what the state, as a corporate parent, is doing to a child at the age of 18. There are some places where some people are able to stay, but surely that should be the absolute standard provision. We need the parity in the Staying Close and Staying Put schemes, which is what these amendments would achieve.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to lend my support to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, regarding extending the Staying Put scheme to the age of 25. My Amendment 130 does exactly the same thing but for some reason is in the next group. I will say a few words about it when we get to the next group, but I just want to underline my support. I think it is a very important issue.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 97 and 99 in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. His support for Amendment 99, and mine, is grounded in—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Those are in the next group.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I apologise; I am just so keen.

--- Later in debate ---

However, I urge noble Lords to be careful that we do not reduce the opportunity here by being too prescriptive. We must make sure that there is flexibility to take advantage of the very best that is available locally and let local determination set the bar and spread improvements on a much wider footing. Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask for the amendment to be withdrawn.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the Minister sits down, I asked about the fact that, apparently, 40% of 17-year-olds turning 18 are in unregulated or independent accommodation. Could the noble Baroness perhaps write to me about that?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I apologise: I knew that I had missed the noble Baroness’s question. Yes, of course I will write on that important point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for my earlier early intervention. Noble Lords know how passionate I am about early intervention and it got the better of me.

Amendments 97 and 99 are in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. My support for my noble friend in his amendments is grounded in a desire, which I am sure all noble Lords share, to see high national standards of support, not just pockets of excellent practice in some local authorities. Having said that, the requirement in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 for local authorities to publish their own offer for care leavers, which this would amend, is an important one. But it needs to be built on. A higher standard at a national level would not prevent innovative and exemplary councils doing even better, but it would force any that were lagging behind to improve. I suspect that those who are dedicated to their local care leavers’ cause and are working hard on the ground would welcome high national standards, as those would help them argue successfully for the enhanced leadership and financial support required to lift their offering.

Another reason why the local offer is an important part of primary legislation is that it includes services relating to relationships—a primary need for children coming into care, while they are in care and when they exit. My noble friend Lord Farmer, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and Lord Mackay, now sadly retired, tabled an amendment to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 that was eventually accepted by the Government, which included the important word “relationships”.

On Amendment 97, the Bill presents an important and timely opportunity to embed relationships more deeply into councils’ arrangements to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living. We should do all we can to enable care leavers to maintain, strengthen and build family and social relationships. Family group decision-making provisions in the Bill need to be built on. Having gone to all the effort to bring together families and friends who are committed to a child potentially leaving their parents’ care, we cannot allow those relationships to fall through the cracks in their care pathway.

The Family Rights Group, which forged Māori-born family group conferencing into a British model over many years by working with families and children with relevant experience, has similarly refined the lifelong links model, which started as the family finding model in Orange County, California. Lifelong links ensure that children in care have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them. A trained co-ordinator works with the child or young person to identify and safely reconnect with important people in their lives, such as relatives they may have lost contact with, former foster carers, teachers or sports coaches. With family group decision-making becoming standard practice, many such people will, or should, have been involved in that process. Keeping these contacts going is a sensible and straightforward next step. The lifelong links approach has demonstrated significant benefits, including more positive and healthy connections in the child’s life and better mental health, instead of isolation and depression, or worse.

Knowing that they matter as an individual to people who are not the professionals paid to look after them gives a child a much better sense of identity. The practical wisdom and guidance that family and friends give often makes the care leaver far more emotionally stable, with a knock-on effect on their ability to hold down accommodation and training or education courses. This reduces the risk of homelessness and of a child trying to make their way without a goal or purpose. Without the motivation that positive relationships provide, it can be very hard to persevere. If you do not matter to anyone, it is easy to wonder what the point of bothering is.

The lifelong links model is currently available in over 40 local authorities across the UK, with 22 receiving Department for Education funding. Lifelong links is not named in this amendment, but, given all of the investment the Government have already made in evidence-building, it should be included in regulations and guidance as an offer to all children in care and care leavers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to be slightly unconventional and start with the last amendment in this group, Amendment 183A, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I think it is so important that it does not get buried in this rather large and diverse group. This amendment seeks to deliver what was, in essence, in the right reverend Prelate’s Private Member’s Bill, which we debated a few months ago, and which I spoke in favour of. It sought to ensure that the universal credit regulations are amended so that care leavers turning 18 receive the same level of universal credit as anyone receives at the age of 25.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who said that these are young people who have no access to the bank of mum and dad and no cushion. We are expecting them to live on a level of universal credit that is not reflective of what other people who have more support—not necessarily, but probably—live on. This is a modest measure. As I said at Second Reading, it is a humane, constructive and practical step. Although this should not be the reason for it, it is very clear that it would end up saving the state money by ensuring people have a little more support and do not fall a very long way through the cracks, as the statistics show they very often do.

At the Second Reading of that Bill, I spoke about the wonderful scheme in Wales that has been trialling universal basic income for care leaves, set at a quite decent level. One of the interesting things was that the only condition put on those care leavers was that they had to take one session of financial education. This is where I come back to Amendment 95, from the noble Baroness Tyler, to which I have attached my name. I have heard anecdotal reports—we have not had the written reports from the UBI trials yet—that one of the offers was that care leavers could take more financial education sessions, in acknowledgement that they had a significant amount of money available to them. Virtually every person in the scheme took the extra financial education. It might seem a bit specialised to have this in an amendment, but it is such an important factor.

I point to the fact that this is a broader issue. Care leavers are obviously people who particularly need financial education, but I note that, last year, the Financial Times Christmas appeal was to raise money to give British young people financial education. That is an indictment of the failure across the whole system to educate young people. It is very clear that care leavers are people who particularly need it, deserve to get it and can hugely benefit from it.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this International Women’s Day debate, and I welcome the Minister to her new role. I should perhaps declare an interest, since I contributed several chapters to the two-volume series The Honourable Ladies, short biographies of all the women MPs up to 1996, which she edited with Iain Dale.

This is my fourth International Women’s Day speech in your Lordships’ House. In previous ones, I have uncovered buried, silenced voices of women from the past, and I was terribly tempted to do that this time. For women in science, there are myriad possibilities: from Aganice, an Egyptian princess during the Middle Kingdom who worked on astronomy and natural history, through to the 17th-century scientific illustrators Giovanna Garzoni and Maria Sibylla Merian—particular favourites of mine, both of whom, atypically for their time and centuries hence, treated insects as independent actors and agents rather than stiff, dead subjects to be pinned for the human gaze. It is possible to draw a direct line of ecological thinking by women from them to Suzanne Simard, the discoverer of what has been dubbed the “world-wide wood” of interrelationships between various species in woodland environments.

However, I could not focus on history today, not in the world of 2025. Instead, my speech will be, if I may humbly say so, a companion to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho. The official theme of this International Women’s Day is “Accelerate Action”, but, rather than that, we need, as the noble Baroness said, to feel the perilous nature of the moment. To put it in one verb, I would say our theme should be “Resist”, for what we are seeing is a dual and interconnected attack on women and on science by the leaders of the world’s most powerful state, the United States of America, which was, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, responsible for 32% of global science and research funding in 2021.

It is not like we were not warned, for the destructive ideology of the Trump Administration was constructed in plain sight, in the form of Project 2050. I give a local woman’s voice—from the US National Women’s Law Center—to explain what is now being implemented in Washington. She says that this project

“seeks to impose a hierarchical, gendered, patriarchal vision of society … focused on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles, and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQIA+ people to thrive outside of a male-dominated heterosexual family. It also seeks to reinforce racial hierarchy”.

We have to note that this is a world envisaged without democracy. If noble Members have not read The Sovereign Individual, I would urge them to. It was republished in 2020 with a preface from Peter Thiel, co-founder of the tech company Palantir, a name I recognise particularly from my time in the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme due to its pervasive presence across our military. The book claims that the “information revolution” will bring about the “death of politics”, for which might be read the death of human rights, the rule of law and what so many women and men have fought for over decades and centuries.

That attack on women and girls, a desire to restrict their human potential, is all too evidently part of a broader attack on science. I note an article in the journal Nature today stating the US National Institutes of Health has begun mass terminations of research grants that fund active scientific projects. The aim is to cancel grants in any way related to gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion in the scientific workforce, environmental justice and climate change. Those ongoing projects are all to be cancelled.

I finish with some questions to the Minister. Of course, sitting in this Chamber we have limited influence on what happens in the United States—perhaps no real influence at all as it increasingly aligns itself with Russia rather than its traditional allies. However, this Government have a responsibility for what happens here in the UK.

I note that on Bluesky today there was an advert from a French university seeking applicants for a “safe place for science programme” that was explicitly directed towards US researchers. Will the Government work with UK institutions to similarly provide a refuge for researchers now based in the US?

Companies such as Google, Amazon and Meta, and firms with tentacles right through the UK Government such as KPMG and Deloitte, are all withdrawing, cancelling or reversing what are known as diversity, equality and inclusion programmes. Will the Government ensure that wherever they operate in the UK, particularly but not solely in the UK Government, British values and laws on diversity and inclusion will be upheld here on our soil?

To pick up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, the slashing of budgets has had a huge impact on global efforts against polio, HIV, malaria and particularly tuberculosis. Are the British Government going to try to pick up the slack? I note that, with TB, there is great concern about antimicrobial resistance.

I want to finish by being a little positive. Final plans are now being made for 32 co-ordinated “stand up for science” rallies across the US and affiliated walkouts and protests around the globe, put together on the initiative of five early-career researchers. Will the Minister join me in supporting that call to stand up for science and agree that UK institutions, such as the Royal Society, should be doing just that?

Education (Assemblies) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 7th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. I think the word he used, “charade”, is a description of our current situation. It is worth looking at how, in other debates in your Lordships’ House, we see some very intense discussion about the nature of our schools. We are seeing a lot of debate on mental ill-health among our young people. Having a charade, which is what it very clearly is, at the foundation of this is not good.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, for his kind words and apologise to the noble Lord for leaving the Chamber during his speech. If you do three Bills in a row, you have to time the comfort breaks quite carefully; I apologise for that.

As with many people in the debate today, I feel a sense of déjà vu in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, for bringing this Bill, as I thanked her three years ago. The arguments for it now are clearer than ever.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I apologise; I omitted from my speech my thanks to the noble Baroness. I want to take the opportunity to say thanks again to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for bringing this Bill back.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am very happy to give way on that basis.

I want to pick up points made by the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme. The Bill the noble Lord described does not reflect the Bill I see in front of me. Arguments were made on the question of representing society. But this is not our society any more. Looking at history, I thought it was interesting that the noble Lord spoke about Judaeo-Christianism as a foundation of democracy. I am not sure if the noble Lord knows that some of the earliest democracy that we know of in the world was the old Assyrian empire, well before even the ancient Greeks. To make a claim of exclusivity to democracy does not stack up.

There are three main points I want to make. First, we often hear about how much pressure there is on schools and how much difficulty they have fitting in time for important lessons and activities. Here is a space and time for moral, spiritual and cultural development that we could be using far more creatively and better. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, said, the time that is currently theoretically allocated for worship could be used creatively to learn about nature, and for the consideration of ourselves as human animals in a more than human world.

Secondly, we have not made a great deal of this argument today, but it is worth pointing out that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has said that the imposition of worship undermines children’s rights under Article 9 of the Human Rights Convention and Article 14 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As I said in the context of the first Bill I spoke on today, we are seeing the rule of law, human rights and UN traditions under such pressure around the world. That really does help to build the case for this Bill.

A 2024 poll showed that a large majority—70%—of school leaders oppose this collective worship. We have this provision, but we know that it is not being delivered. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, this is a charade. The UK is the only sovereign state where Christian worship is compulsory in state schools, including those without a religious character. We are talking about a law dating back to 1944. It really is time that we moved on and provided care and support for our children.

During this time, a local theatre group could come in and put on a little play that poses a moral conundrum, which could then be discussed. As I said, the time could be used to discuss nature, or there could be lessons in first aid and how to react in situations where it is needed. This time could be well spent on these really useful things—education for life, not exams—and that is what the noble Baroness’s Bill moves towards.

I finish by offering the Green group’s strongest possible support for the Bill, and I very much hope that it progresses.

Lifelong Learning

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for securing this debate. I am interested in his suggestion of a subscription model for universities for lifelong learning, not just because, as someone who spent about 8.3 years full-time equivalent in universities, I would do rather well out of that model; none the less, I am going to stick with the Green Party’s understanding that education is a public good that should be paid for from general taxation—far more progressive taxation than we have now—rather than being a weight on the individual.

I commend the noble Lord particularly for the phrasing of the question, which looks at the social and personal value of lifelong learning, as well as the economic value. To be an informed voter, to be a parent able to help their children navigate a fast-changing world in the age of shocks, to contribute to your community as a citizen, lifelong learning is not a “nice to have”, or an add-on but an essential basis for health and survival, both individually and collectively.

However, I am going to turn one word around and focus on the importance of unlearning what we might previously have been taught—of acknowledging that science and knowledge are not one fixed certainty, or a tower built on solid foundations, progressing forward with stately certainty. As a society, as individuals, we need to unlearn much.

I am 58 years old, and much of what I was taught at school and early university, from the supposition of DNA providing a blueprint for life to the “primitiveness” of hunter-gatherer life and the inevitability of the tragedy of the commons, was demonstrably wrong. Much of the thinking of the 20th century—which often in the global North claimed universality but in fact was highly particular to the ideology and interests of the few at that moment—has been disproved or simply surpassed by the huge volume of knowledge generation we have seen in recent decades and, just starting, by knowledge recovery from indigenous and other cultures.

To give three examples: students are still taught, and the media extols in expensively produced wildlife documentaries and casual news commentaries, that life on this planet is built on the foundation of competition. Yet everyone should know that the 20th-century giant of biology, Lynn Margulis, developed our understanding of symbiosis—the co-operation between species—and of the source of mitochondria and chloroplasts, the origin and foundation of all complex life forms, and everyone should understand how soils are a co-operative production of more-than-human life and non-living entities, not an inert chemical substrate, as I was taught at university. If the very foundation of life is co-operation, not competition, our view of the world and our society has to change.

Then there is the so-called central dogma of US biologist James Watson, the physicist, eugenicist and misogynist—after whom, astonishingly, the new research centre at St Pancras was named—which has been substantively debunked yet is still widely taught.

There is also the tragedy of the commons, which is all too often taught as fact rather than the fantasy of Garrett Hardin, a would-be applier of coercive population control. We were told that holding resources in private ownership was the only way to protect them. Yet it was in 1990 that Elinor Ostrom, later a Nobel Economics Prize winner, published Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.

The Minister frequently speaks to us about the Government’s curriculum review. I hope that it and indeed the curriculums and approaches of our colleges and universities, and the approaches to further education taken by everything from the University of the Third Age to sceptics in the pub, will all adopt knowledge for the 21st century, because that is what we need.

Schools: Citizenship Education

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The ability to take part in citizenship education in both primary and secondary schools, as the noble Baroness says—of course, in secondary school it is a compulsory part of the national curriculum—is an important part of ensuring that young people are engaged. On her first point, the need for broader support of and engagement with young people is the reason why the Government launched plans in November 2024 to create a new national youth strategy for and by young people, as part of our mission to improve opportunity.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, debate in your Lordships’ House in recent weeks has often focused on the issue of poor mental health, particularly among young people. In general, we know that it is good for your mental health to have agency and control over your own present and future. Would the Minister agree that bringing in votes at 16 or younger would be good for mental health and that education to accompany that would be excellent as well?

Free Schools and Academies

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for securing this debate on the “achievements” of free schools and academies—although that is not the noun that I would use.

Our debate already has focused—and I suspect largely will focus—on exam results. My focus will be broader, for I, and the Green Party collectively, do not think that education should be for exams or focused primarily on future employment but should provide life skills, particularly an interest in and capacity for lifelong learning, and allow for the development of innate interests and talents, the blossoming of body and mind, that provides the foundation for a decent, healthy life for each and every child and young person. Schools should be at the centre of active, lively, flourishing communities and not the cause of massive traffic jams as parents cross the city back and forth to hunt for the “best” school.

The creation and—often forcible—spread of free schools and academies, particularly chains, which account now for more than 80% of secondary schools in England and heading towards half of primaries, has actively worked against schools meeting those goals. They have been set to compete against each other for exam results, to outdo each other with the appearance and actuality of harsh and punitive discipline, particularly in poorer communities, with competition that encourages them to expel, or shuffle out, pupils who do not fit “the brand”.

How might we judge that cross-party consensus of the past 25 years? I have one league table: the Children’s Society offers us a crucial and deeply disturbing tool in its annual study of 15 year-olds across 27 nations, on which the UK ranks bottom. Last year, 25% of UK 15 year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of Dutch children of the same age. Low levels of life satisfaction were at least twice as prevalent among UK 15 year-olds compared with their peers in Finland, Denmark, Romania, Portugal, Croatia and Hungary—that makes my blood boil.

Blame for the unhappiness and the mental health crisis that the Financial Times highlights today with figures on mental health admissions to general medical wards, reflecting what one expert described as

“a population-level increase in mental health conditions”,

is often put on the rise of social media or on concern about the future linked to the climate emergency and nature crisis. Those are factors, but they have smartphones and the climate crisis in those comparable countries too.

What about physical health? Of children aged between 11 and 15, 19% are obese, and less than half of our children and young people are meeting the recommendation of 60 minutes of daily physical activity—and 30% did less than 30 minutes a day. We also all know that education about life skills, such as first aid, cooking and nutrition, food growing, financial literacy and indeed the enjoyment of reading for pleasure, which your Lordships’ House discussed earlier today, is sadly lacking. The FT’s Christmas campaign was directed at providing financial education.

Even worse, what about those who are forced out because they do not fit in? Figures for the autumn term 2023-24 are horrifying, showing nearly 350,000 suspensions—a rate of 413 suspensions per 10,000 pupils. The rate of expulsions is up too, with 4,200 children permanently excluded in one term, up from 3,100 the previous year. Those are the formal figures: from travelling around the country, I hear many reports of informal exclusions. Parents, often of children with special educational needs, are being encouraged—strongly suggested—to take the home-schooling route, much against their will.

Then there is attendance. There is a focus on the 150,000 “severely absent” children missing 50% or more of school sessions in the last year. That has tended to look at individuals and their families, but why is school not an attractive, welcoming, nurturing place but one to be dodged at almost all costs, particularly for vulnerable pupils?

My words are not intended in any way to be a criticism of some 500,000 teachers and other school professionals, the vast majority of whom I know, from regular school visits, do their best to provide a rounded education and a healthy, caring environment, all too often in opposition to government policies and institutional structures imposed on them, and in the face of grossly inadequate funding. I acknowledge that there are many other aspects of British society that impact badly on young people’s lives, but many of the young people I talk to tell me that school is something that harmed them—that they survived. If they did indeed struggle through the experience, they endured it, waiting to escape. That is not what school should be. Yet the academisation and expansion of free schools, competing against each other, delivering large profits to private providers of goods and services and high pay to fat cat bosses, is, together with a central ideology of valuing exam factories, fundamentally failing our young people.