Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow my noble friend in supporting the amendment, which is in his name and mine. I am conscious of the hour, so I shall be brief in endorsing the point that my noble friend made. This is a modest amendment in that it seeks only to place a duty on Ministers to do something that we surely would all wish them to do anyway. It is crucial because it seeks to make the huge error of closing schools during the Covid pandemic far less likely to be repeated.

Many of us thought, at the time, that it was a mistake to engage in protracted school closures and that it would be immensely damaging. The excellent work of UsForThem, run by the splendid Molly Kingsley, helped to highlight the problems that were going to be caused. These harms were always going to be significant, but the evidence since the end of the Covid restrictions, as my noble friend pointed out, suggests that our fears five years ago were actually a gross underestimate of the damage that would be done to children and young people.

The repeated lockdowns and school closures constituted, in my view, the biggest public policy disaster in modern history. The fact that the interests of children and young people were treated so lightly is a disgrace. The damage to mental health, to education and to levels of school attendance have all been, and continue to be, profound. The lessons from Sweden, Florida and those few places around the world that took a more measured and intelligent approach is proof that many of our restrictions delivered little if any benefit while doing immense damage.

This amendment would ensure that, should there be pressure to repeat school closures in a future emergency, the government response would have to be transparent and that the criteria used to decide on school closure and opening would have to be clear and available to the public and to Parliament. It would ensure that Parliament would have a role in making those decisions in a way that Parliament was denied during the Covid period. I urge the Government and the Committee to accept it.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 502P and will give my support to Amendment 502YB, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. If the noble Lord, Lord Young, chooses to put his amendment to a vote later, I will support it; I thought that his introduction to it was very well argued.

I am deeply sympathetic to the Ministers handling this Bill, as schools are being asked to do so many different things. It is the widest brief imaginable—and I am coming up with something else at the end of the day and at the end of the Bill. My amendment is about adaptation and mitigation around flooding and heat risks. Just this summer, we have seen schools having to close because of excess heat. Near where I live in Somerset, the school in Tiverton is now flooding almost every year; the defence is very poor. Looking at all our green and sustainable amendments, my worry is that the Government are not taking seriously enough the issue of how we adapt to the coming weather threats. This amendment is a stitch in time for tomorrow.

Before the summer, I tabled Questions about how much information the department held about the amount of lost learning time due to flooding and heat stress. The document came back saying that, if no adaptation measures were implemented, it was predicted that, in 2050, eight days a year could be lost due to extreme heat levels. That is a lot. It is also quite a long way ahead, and therefore there is every possibility of the can being kicked down the road. That would be unwise, as so much in the climate change world is changing much faster than we anticipated, and things are already happening now.

That document said that, on the basis of the EA analysis, 20% and 34% respectively of primary and secondary school buildings were at high risk, and 37% and 59% of them were at medium risk of surface water flooding right now. So we are in a position where we know some, but not all, the impacts. We are indeed lacking a lot of knowledge about the impacts of heat and what is an okay temperature to expect school kids to learn in and teachers to teach in.

My amendment would require the Government to produce a “safe and resilient schools” plan that lays out how existing school buildings will be consistent with net-zero emissions and become resistant not just to climate change but to the flooding and overheating that are the by-products of climate change, which is obviously why we are pursuing net zero. Importantly, it would change existing government guidance, introduced by the previous Government to apply to new school buildings, so that they should be designed for a 2 degree rise—we are already at nearly 1.5 degrees—and future-proofed for a 4 degree rise in temperatures, while also being built to adapt to climate risks. These two things seem fairly simple and, I hope, doable. Given the current situation, which is evident from the Government’s own papers, I would find it really hard to accept that these are not real and expected risks that need to be addressed.

I quickly draw attention to a report on about 60 London schools that was carried out a couple of years ago at the behest of the mayor. It looked at what tailored actions they could take. Of the schools surveyed, 93% reported overheating as an issue that they had experienced in the last couple of summers; 78% said that overheating had a significant impact on learning; and 43% experienced this multiple times, or continuously through their summer term. It is great that something was done and that these schools now know what they need to do, but these measures have not actually been installed because, unfortunately, they cost money. This was just 60 schools out of the 30,000 in England. We need a nationwide plan. It is absolutely not the case that one size fits all. I am afraid that this is a case where difference is important.

We also need to realise that air conditioning can never be the future. You cannot use excessive heating in the winter and excessive air-con in the summer, because we cannot afford the energy. We are in an energy transition, and that is not a workable long-term solution. But you can do a lot, such as shading windows from the outside, having natural ventilation and having many more trees—which is a good thing in lots of other respects—planted around schools. It would be a capital investment into our publicly owned infrastructure and would make schools resilient. We also need to think about what the costs of inaction are: lost days at school.

I have three specific questions. Would it be possible to ask schools a list of questions about what their experiences have been of, say, this summer’s unnaturally warm weather? Could the Minister take on the responsibility for providing data on the department’s assessment of school plans to help schools transition? I know that we are asking a lot, but this is going to come and bite us very soon. Finally, has the department at any time considered moving exams away from the hottest moment of the year, because that is pretty tough for the kids?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502X, to which I have added my name and which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. This is what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just described as a hobby-horse. I suspect that, into that description, she would put the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, with which I could not agree more. What is education for if not to equip our children to deal with the world in the best possible way? Money certainly should be part of it.

My short amendment addresses food. Currently, 25% of five year-old kids are going into primary school overweight or obese, and the figure is between 40% and 45% for those coming out of primary school. We all have to eat and we all have to deal with the food system. A previous Government said many years ago that part of the education system would include children learning to cook five savoury dishes by the time they are 15. That barely happens in schools because they do not have kitchens and there is no requirement on them to do it, and therefore it falls by the wayside.

For 10 years, I ran the London Food Board. We set up a project called Capital Growth, which was linked to the Olympics. In that time, we created 2,500 community gardens in London, of which about 500 were in schools. They were in super weird places in schools—one was in a shopping trolley round the back of the sports hut. Nevertheless, people were growing potatoes, and the kids were amazed by it, because in one bang they got a sense of nature, wonder and growing, as well as a sense of patience, effort and doing something together. I went to one particularly inspirational school, where they had 43 basic first languages, and the headmaster explained how he used beans to teach people to do maths. He had nine beans, for example, and he said, “Make three rows”, and the children would say, “That’s three times three”. A whole range of things was possible in being able to swap cultures.

This could be described as a hobby-horse, in that I believe that this is very healthy and good for children, and we do not want our children being unwell—and yet that is what is happening. We are bringing up a generation of kids who are overweight; they do not do enough exercise, but, ultimately, they are eating terrible food. You can blame parents as much as you like, but at the moment parents are poor and healthier food is more expensive. Therefore, the school, I am afraid, has to be one of the places where children are taught about and encouraged to try different foods, to learn how to cook and to understand that the fuel they put in their bodies, just like the fuel you put in a car, is extremely important to their health outcomes. If they have lousy health outcomes, they will not get great jobs, they will not have a great life, they will have sick days and they will not be useful to this country or to themselves.

This is a fundamental element of life that needs to be incorporated into school curriculums, and not just as a hobby-horse. Obviously, the subject will differ, because it depends quite a bit on the passion of the teachers. However, most schools that I know that have done this have said that it has paid off massively. I would like to see whether the Minister can find some way to incorporate this kind of teaching into the schools of the future.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group and make the case that Clause 47 should not stand part of the Bill.

There are three main reasons for our objection to Clause 47. The first is the wider point, which we have discussed in our debates on other groups, about the value of autonomy at a school or trust level combined with clear accountability. This clause removes the autonomy that academies have had over the curriculum while disregarding the safeguards that exist via both the public exam system and the 2019 Ofsted inspection framework. Without this autonomy, we risk stifling the innovation and creativity that we have seen in recent years, where leading trusts have developed high-quality curricula and shared them freely with other schools. My noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park gave some fantastic examples, including among some of our wonderful free schools.

I am not suggesting that the Government want to see the stifling of creativity—I am sure that they want quite the reverse—but they need to explain how things will work in practice if this clause is to become law. I thank my noble friend Lord Sewell for his powerful intervention and for the extraordinary impact that he and others had on schools in Hackney; that is still being ably implemented by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton.

Secondly, the Secretary of State has tremendous powers over the curriculum, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. A future Secretary of State could use those powers to be much more prescriptive in terms of not just what needs to be in the main elements of the national curriculum—English, maths and science, in particular—but how those elements are taught, which the previously Government intentionally avoided doing. Indeed, we wanted to give all schools space outside the core subjects of the national curriculum so that they could exercise their discretion. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, that I have definitely visited schools that are busy doing beekeeping and other things of which, I am sure, she would approve. So the Secretary of State has the power to expand the national curriculum.

Thirdly, as for much of this Bill, as other noble Lords have said, we just do not see that there is a problem that needs solving in this way. My noble friend Lady Spielman was clear in her time as Ofsted’s chief inspector that some academies narrowed the curriculum too much. This was addressed by the inspectorate under the previous framework, so the system already has the checks and balances that it needs to make sure that schools cannot game the system. The picture that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, painted—that of academies teaching whatever they wanted—is not an accurate one, given that, as I said earlier, they enter public exams and are all inspected by Ofsted.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister that this clause is not needed and risks doing more harm than good. As we will debate in a later group, we would much rather recognise the strengths of maintained schools and give their leaders greater flexibility. Further, a number of schools simply do not have the facilities needed to deliver certain parts of the curriculum, such as design and technology. Can the Minister confirm that, if this clause becomes law, the department will fund the necessary investment to address these gaps?

I was very pleased to add my name to Amendment 443 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. He expertly set out the problems with the Henry VIII powers in this Bill. I know that time is short, so perhaps the Minister could write to the noble Lord—indeed, to all of your Lordships—setting out exactly the Government’s understanding of what these Henry VIII powers cover and how they could be used, not by the current Secretary of State but by a future Secretary of State, because I think that we need our legislation to protect us against all flavours of Secretary of State and government.

I am concerned that Amendment 506D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, does not reflect the reality that the Secretary of State can make all of these changes to the curriculum via regulation and can amend primary legislation.

The amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Agnew of Oulton and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, would try to carve out exemptions for high-performing schools. I absolutely support the spirit of them.

This debate comes at a time when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, we are awaiting the recommendations of the curriculum and assessment review. As can be seen from many of the amendments in this group, there is pressure to introduce more and more subjects into the curriculum. Apparently, in 2018, the organisation Parents and Teachers for Excellence counted 213 topics that were recommended in that year for inclusion in the curriculum. The question remains: if the curriculum is expanded, what has to come out?

Ministers in both Houses have sought to assure us that we do not need to worry about these changes, but the Minister will understand that the curriculum reforms led by the previous Government, which have contributed so significantly to our improvement in the global rankings in reading, maths and science, were hard won and hard fought. So, in addition to our principled objection to removing autonomy from school leaders rather than extending it to maintained schools, there is a deep-seated worry that the siren calls for a more progressive approach to the curriculum might gain traction despite the best efforts of the review team, which is ably led by Professor Becky Francis, for whom I have great respect.

I close not with the words of Ernest Bevin but by quoting, as other noble Lords have done in our debate on this group, from a blog written by Mark McCourt, the chair of the Advantage Schools Trust. He speaks for many of us in terms of why we all feel so anxious that the Government get this curriculum review right. He writes:

“To offer a demanding, powerful curriculum to every child is not elitist. It is egalitarian. It says to the child: you are worthy of this knowledge. You are capable of wrestling with complexity. You deserve access to the accumulated wisdom and accomplishments of those who came before you. This is your birthright and it is now yours to own and protect … We are not gatekeepers. We are door openers. And if we do not open those doors, especially for the children least likely to find them on their own, then we are complicit in keeping them shut”.

UK Poverty 2025

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question and pay tribute to those not just in her diocese but across the country who are working so hard—volunteers and organisations, including churches—to support those who need help. The Government are committed to ending mass dependence on emergency food parcels. We recognise that there will always be times when people need emergency help, but I am interested in seeing that there is a wider range of support available.

For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has previously described, you can get better support for people so that they can make different choices and move on. The Minister for Employment is today attending the opening of the West Midlands Multibank to learn about the range of support that can be given; for instance, business surpluses are used to support people. In the end, however, the right reverend Prelate is correct: we need to drive up household income so that people do not need to do this. A key way to do that has to be to get people into good jobs, and to support them so that they stay in them and develop in them. We are determined to do that.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

We will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, please.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her acknowledgement of the work we do at Feeding Britain—I say this with my Food Foundation hat on. Our recent report The Broken Plate estimates that people who are among the lowest fifth in terms of income would have to spend 45% of it in order to eat a healthy diet, a figure that rises to 70% if the household has children. One thing the Government could do is to ensure that everyone can enrol on the Healthy Start scheme and receive vouchers. They are not that much, but they make a difference because they have to be spent on decent food. At the moment, this does not happen and about 800,000 people are not getting a support that is already there. Can the Minister look at co-ordinating the different systems to make this happen automatically?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question; I will certainly look into that and see what else the Government can do. There are a number of programmes, which are not always well known. For example, the holiday activities and food programme, which the noble Baroness will know about, provides in its broadest sense healthy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places for children from low-income families. Bringing together those schemes helps their health, well-being and learning. Also, the Government are committed to developing free school meals. The noble Baroness will know that from this April, free breakfast clubs will be rolled out. We have already picked the first 750 early adopters, which means that more than 180,000 children will begin to benefit—time together in schools learning, and also eating and being ready for the next day.

Food Banks

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, obviously I dream of that day. I have visited a fascinating place in the north-east called REfUSE, based in Chester-le-Street in County Durham. It gets free food and has people, as either volunteers or staff, who can help to create meals where people then pay what they can afford. It has branched out from that to start doing catering for events, such as weddings. This does a couple of things. It raises awareness of the tragedy of food waste, while showing how we can reuse things creatively to produce brilliant food; it also helps all of us to think better. If we do not want to end up with food shortages, we all need to get better at reusing and recycling, and buying well in the first place.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of Feeding Britain. The Minister has just outlined one of our social supermarkets, which are a bridge between a food bank and getting people back into normal eating and being able to afford food. We sell surplus and waste food for about 30p in the pound with people joining a club depending on their status, area and income. They are taught to cook and allowed to shop with honour, and our cafes become self-sustaining after the initial costs of setting up. Will she agree to meet us or to come and visit some of our supermarkets? I can see that she has already visited one. They are a way forward, whereas the food bank is a way back.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, they both have their place, at least at the moment, but I would be very happy to visit. I have visited other such things but I am always interested in the creativity behind this. I have visited a brilliant one over in Waterloo, run by Oasis and the Catholic Church. It was fascinating that they were able to engage with and provide support to people who came in, finding out their problems and dealing with them at the root. But there was also a pantry, and somebody proudly told me how he could not only go and get food from it but had been able to cook dinner and invite his neighbours in. That is a wonderful thing to do; it tackles isolation and gives him the opportunity to give something out to others and to learn along the way. It is brilliant and I commend the noble Baroness for her work on this.

Household Support Fund

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, certainly in this Parliament, we will provide councils with more stability and certainty through multiyear funding settlements. The aim is to ensure that councils can plan their finances for the future properly. But we will also work with local leaders to try to end competitive bidding for pots of money, and to reform things such as the local audit system to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. I know that my colleagues in MHCLG are very interested in working together with local government to find a better way of funding local councils.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure everyone welcomes the government scheme to introduce free breakfasts, but I am concerned about the rates of obesity, especially in lower-income areas. When kids come in at five, 25% are obese, and when they leave at 11, 47% are obese. What are the standards of these breakfasts? Many breakfasts that schools offer are bagels and high-sugar cereal, because these get donated by companies trying to “look good” in the eyes of their shareholders. I have not read anywhere what the standards of food are and I would be very interested to meet with the Minister to discuss this, because it is critical if we are to have a genuine health impact.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point and I commend her for raising it repeatedly in this House. It is an important question and I have two things to say. First, the breakfasts will be fully funded; they will not be done on the cheap. Secondly, colleagues in the Department for Education will consider carefully the question of the composition and health nature of the breakfasts; I am sure that will be taken into account. I will make sure that point gets passed back.

Child Poverty

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I beg to differ with the noble Baroness, because analysis shows that the Government’s cost of living support prevented 1.3 million people falling into absolute poverty after housing costs in 2022-23. That includes 300,000 children, 600,000 working-age adults and 400,000 pensioners. The £96 billion I alluded to earlier included £20 billion for two rounds of cost of living payments for more than 8 million households on eligible means-tested benefits. I gently say to the noble Baroness that she should bear these very important initiatives in mind.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to the 200,000 children who represent 14% of the children who are eligible for free school meals, even on the very small amount of money their parents are allowed to use, who are not registered. They are not registered because there is no automatic registration, which can happen extremely easily once people are handed out universal credit. I have asked the Government this many times: why does automatic registration not happen? This is 200,000 kids today, right now, who did not get a meal that we pay for.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have certainly taken note of the point raised by the noble Baroness, but I say again that we have extended eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century. Free meal support is also available to around 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education, so an awful lot has been happening in that space.

Universal Credit

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

As the Minister has just said, and the House agrees, the price of food is very high. Could the Minister explain to the House—or maybe help me—why we have a very good system called Healthy Start, which provides a supplementary bit of money to pregnant mums and kids under four, yet 40% of the people who are eligible for this are not registered, because the system is really complicated? NGOs such as the one I chair, Feeding Britain, have been campaigning for a long time for automatic registration. The money is there; it is not drastically expensive. Could the Minister agree to look into this very simple process that would help a lot of people?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Again, I will certainly take that point back. The Healthy Start scheme is an important point of the Government’s programme. Through healthy food schemes, the Government provide a nutritional safety net to those families who need it most. In terms of the uptake, the latest Healthy Start uptake figures were published, as the noble Baroness may be aware, on 31 October. The uptake for the NHS Healthy Start scheme was 70%.

Charitable Sector: Food Provision

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right. We recognise that charities and community organisations have been hit by a triple threat of rising demand, rising costs and declining income over recent months. I applaud the role the Church plays in this respect. I am also very aware of the rising costs of certain food items from places such as Morocco and Spain due to climate change. But the funding we are giving broadly supplements the intervention to support households and businesses. The Government also support some of these vulnerable groups through other funding, such as through DLUHC.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, have the Government considered properly the role of the social supermarket? I speak as the chair of Feeding Britain. We have opened 260 of them, which you join as a club. You can then shop at around 30% to 40% off in the pound. You also get taught to cook and you get community help, which has been so stripped out over the years of austerity. For instance, in the Wirral, where I was on Friday, we have six such social supermarkets. Every Monday they have an adviser on benefits. In the course of 18 months, 1 million quid has been returned to people because they do not understand the complexities of the benefit system. These set-ups work to put back things that used to be in before the age of austerity. Will the Minister agree to come and look at one with me and consider how the Government can take them forward?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I would certainly be very pleased to join the noble Baroness to look at social supermarkets. She will be aware that the main supermarkets do offer some help in this respect. For example, Morrisons offers an average 13% price cut on more than 500 goods, including eggs, beef and rice. Children get a free meal at Morrisons cafés when their parent buys an adult meal worth £4.99.

Universal Credit

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for reminding us about the principles of universal credit and, at the same time, of the difficult circumstances that people find themselves in. I stress again that we are providing help through dedicated work coaches and engagement with employers. We are supporting people back into work in a whole host of ways, not least the 250,000 green jobs that we want to create. We do not want to trap people on benefits; we want to help them.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of Feeding Britain. We estimate that if this £20-a-week lifeline is pulled, up to 700,000 people will be pushed into poverty, including 300,000 kids. The NHS is creaking at the seams, but so is the food bank system that has become so endemic in our country. If the Government are taking this money away, what plan do they have to ensure that hungry kids get enough to eat?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

At the risk of repeating myself, I say that we are waiting for the Chancellor to assess the situation before making a decision about how best to support low-income families. As for what we are doing for children, there are free school meal vouchers and we are providing £16 million for food charities to get food to those who are struggling and 4.5 million food boxes for vulnerable people. We are expanding free school meals, establishing a new £1 billion fund to create more high-quality, affordable childcare and putting £35 million into the national school breakfast programme. We are not taking our foot off the accelerator on any support we give.

Universal Credit

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I note the point that the noble Baroness makes and it is well made, but as I said, the Government’s position is that we have no plans to increase legacy benefits further. People on legacy benefits can transfer to universal credit and they can do a calculation before they transfer to make sure they will be better off.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

Like other noble Lords, I congratulate the Government on coming some of the way towards Marcus Rashford’s and other food campaigners’ demands. This weekly increase of £20 does pay for the bulk of a single person’s grocery budget and is one of the things keeping a lot of people out of food banks, although, as my noble friend Lord Clancarty pointed out, these figures continue to rise. It seems extremely ironic that the Government have decided to support food banks and declare that they are an essential part of our system when we should be working to abolish them, yet they are contemplating taking away this small increase of £20 and, as was just mentioned, not affording it to people on JSA or ESA. I come back to my noble friend Lord Woolley of Woodford’s original Question and ask the Minister: what plans do the Government have to keep this increase for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic and after it? It does make a difference.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

As I already said to the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, we are having discussions with the Treasury on the best way to support people both through Covid-19 and beyond. As soon as those decisions are made, Parliament will be advised.