Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 243 deals with climate mitigation and adaptation. It would make statutory existing government guidance that new school buildings must be both net zero in operation and adapted to 2 degrees of warming, and would require the Government to produce a safe and resilient schools plan, laying out how existing school buildings would meet these targets.

One issue is that the Government do not seem to know the scale of the problem—for instance, the department does not hold information about the amount of lost learning time due to flooding. We have done a bit of research on the impact of extreme weather recently. Storm Chandra in late January caused 80 schools to close or partially close in Devon, Dorset and Somerset. Over 400 schools closed in Northern Ireland on 27 January due to weather, and Storm Goretti caused at least 278 schools in northern Scotland to close. That adds up to hundreds of lost school days across the UK. Of course we expect some of this—we cannot get around the snow—but my point is that weather events are increasing, and we could risk losing a lot of learning days, not to mention the soggy books and school equipment that are left behind.

The UK has no statutory reporting system, and what data exists is only at the local authority level; it is primarily for parents, not for anything strategic. Can the Minister commit that the department will start to track this centrally so that we have some kind of usable data?

The wider issue is that we lack a plan for how to deal with what is coming down the road. Everyone knows that climate change is getting worse, and we need a climate adaptation plan for schools. It needs to come from central government, otherwise we risk creating a multitiered system, where some schools do better and some do not. Probably, almost inevitably, it will be the poorest schools that end up being closed when there is a bad flooding event.

We have a template to follow; a few years ago, the Mayor of London commissioned a report which tailored plans for 60 schools. Many of the solutions were very simple, such as flood doors, shading and ventilation windows, which could be deployed widely and cheaply. The London report found that 93% of schools in the capital reported overheating as an issue, 78% said that it had a significant impact on learning and 43% experienced it multiple times or continuously through the summer term. Yes, London is relatively dry or hot and there will be different issues, largely flooding, in areas like the West Country. But the climate science shows that we are getting hotter summers and wetter winters, and that will only increase.

I know that there will be costs but, as with all things connected to our changing weather system, it is much cheaper to act now than later. As a starting point, will the Minister consider asking schools about this as part of annual surveys, and commit that the department will assess any plans that schools have made and issue general overall guidance on what to do? On the basis of these bits of information, I suspect that it will become abundantly clear that what we need is a Department for Education led safe and resilient schools plan.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 243A, I declare my interests as the director of the Free Speech Union and a member of the Knowledge Schools Trust.

The amendment would stop safeguarding policies and procedures in schools being misused for political purposes, a prime example being the recent cancellation of a talk by the Labour MP Damien Egan at a secondary school in his Bristol constituency, on the grounds that allowing a vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel to speak posed a safeguarding risk to children. The Bristol branch of the National Education Union said on its Facebook page, after Mr Egan was no-platformed:

“We celebrate this cancellation as a win for safeguarding”.


In another Facebook post, the Bristol branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign also described Mr Egan’s ban as a win for safeguarding.

At the Free Speech Union, we have come across numerous examples of school safeguarding policies being weaponised by political activists to silence their opponents, whether visiting speakers or members of staff. For instance, the Free Speech Union recently took on the case of a teacher in Henley who was referred to the local authority designated officer—LADO, the official in charge of investigating safeguarding concerns—because he showed his A-level politics class some Trump campaign videos from the 2024 presidential election. The teacher was accused of causing his A-level students, aged 17 and 18, “emotional harm”. In one document, local officials in charge of child protection suggested that the showing of the Trump campaign videos could amount to a “hate crime”. Incidentally, he also showed the students in his A-level politics class some of Kamala Harris’s campaign videos, but those did not raise any safeguarding concerns.

In another Free Speech Union case, a teacher at a primary school in Tower Hamlets was sacked and referred to his local child protection board after telling off some Muslim boys for washing their feet in the sinks in the boys’ lavatories. I could go on.

Safeguarding policies and procedures were put in place to protect children from abusive parents and sexual predators, yet the weaponisation of these policies by political activists risks local authority designated officers and local safeguarding boards not taking genuine concerns seriously. That in turn endangers children’s safety. It is hard to think of a more cynical form of political activism—but, of course it has the desired effect. What MP who is sympathetic to Israel in its war with Hamas will risk arranging a visit to a school in his or her constituency knowing, ahead of time, that they could end up being no-platformed and branded a safeguarding risk to children?

Amendment 243A would put a stop to this mischief. It says:

“When making safeguarding assessments or investigating safeguarding complaints in relation to teachers, visitors or volunteers in schools and other educational settings, no account may be taken of the political views expressed or presented by the subject of that safeguarding assessment or complaint, provided those views are not … unworthy of respect in a democratic society … in conflict with the fundamental rights of others, or … affiliated with any political party, group or organisation which is proscribed for the purposes of the Terrorism Act 2000”.


We urgently need to stop this cynical weaponisation of policies and procedures that were put in place to protect children from predators and abusers, not unfashionable political opinions.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 114 and 118 in this group on the cost of school uniforms. This issue is about far more than clothing; it goes to the heart of the cost of living crisis. It affects children’s dignity and well-being, and, ultimately, their ability to learn and succeed in school. For too many families, the start of the school year is no longer a moment of optimism; it is about anxiety. Parents dread opening the uniform price list, knowing that compliance is mandatory and flexibility is limited. Branded blazers, logoed jumpers, PE kits and specialist items are often required from a single supplier, with costs running to hundreds of pounds per child, payable up front, when household budgets are already under severe strain.

The evidence is clear. Research commissioned by the Department for Education shows that the average cost of school uniforms and PE kits is close to £400 per child, rising to over £440 for secondary school pupils. These are not trivial sums. For families with two or three children, the cost can exceed £1,000 in a single year. For parents who are on low incomes, with insecure jobs or reliant on benefits, these costs are simply not manageable. The reality for many households is stark. Parents report cutting back on food, delaying rent or utility payments, or taking on high street debt, simply to ensure children are not penalised for incorrect uniforms. Some skip meals so their children can attend school properly dressed. Others are humiliated into asking schools for help or exemptions, knowing that support is inconsistent and often discriminatory.

The consequences fall most heavily on children. When families cannot afford the required uniforms, pupils are sent home, isolated from lessons or disciplined because their clothing does not meet school rules. Others attend school embarrassed and anxious that they stand out or are judged for their family’s circumstances. This sense of shame undermines confidence and damages well-being. This matters not only for children’s mental health but for their education itself. There is strong evidence that stress and financial insecurity are linked to poor attendance, reduced concentration and low attainment. A child worried about being reprimanded for their uniform is not focused on learning. Excessive uniform costs become a barrier to education rather than supporting it.

We must also recognise that this burden is not evenly distributed. Families in areas already facing high levels of deprivation, including parts of the north-east, the Midlands and coastal communities, report significantly greater difficulties affording school uniforms. High uniform costs in these areas compound existing disadvantage and widen attainment gaps that the Government rightly say they wish to close. A system in which affordability varies by postcode is neither fair nor defensible.

That is why my first amendment proposes a cap on the total cost of branded uniform items, rather than limiting the number. The item-based cap is insufficient. Single branded blazers can cost £50 or more and a logoed PE kit even more. What matters to families is not how many items are required but how much they are forced to pay. The clear financial cap is fairer, more transparent and more effective, while allowing schools flexibility.

My second amendment addresses the continued application of VAT on compulsory school uniforms, particularly for those of a certain size. In effect, this is a tax on clothing that children are legally required to wear to access education. The zero rating for school uniforms up to the age of 16 would provide immediate, targeted relief, particularly for families with multiple children and for those on the lowest incomes. These amendments do not undermine discipline, standards or school identity; uniforms can foster belonging and pride. But no child should feel ashamed or excluded because their parents cannot afford an overpriced item with a logo. If we are serious about supporting families, improving well-being and narrowing attainment gaps, I urge noble Lords to support these amendments.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“no more than 50 mg”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

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

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Barran and to associate myself with Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, whom it is a pleasure to follow.

The Welfare Food Regulations 1996 lay out in astonishing detail the importance of milk to those who were entitled to it for the early years. While there are different regulatory regimes in Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, it is clear that certain children in certain circumstances are entitled to dried milk or fresh milk in prescribed portions per week, be it according to age; to those whose families are on financial assistance for low income; to the Healthy Start, which would include expectant mothers and those with children otherwise under four—and, of course, some people of any age, including children, but not necessarily children, with certain physical and mental difficulties.

I think it is common ground on all sides of this House that the provision of milk as part of a healthy diet is a good thing. But the regulations provide for this milk to be dispensed, if I can use that word, in maternity and healthcare centres, as part of the National Health Service, but also in other welfare and food distribution centres. But the world has changed, and these settings are no longer the only places where people access help.

The NHS, which may work from nine to five, or a food distribution centre, which may open for only a few mornings a week, are not necessarily the only places nowadays where people can access the help they need. Those settings are just not as thick on the ground as they used to be at times that are convenient to families.

I do not deny the good work of those settings, but others are available under the same regulations, and some of them are even paid for by the state. My noble friend Lady Barran laid out the importance of childminders and childminder agencies as a part of the mix that helps provide time and space for families to get into work so they can earn and improve their family circumstances, with the flexibility to take different jobs, which may be available on a part-time, out-of-hours or seasonal basis.

These settings—the childminder agencies—are relevant. They are local, flexible and professional, and we have heard that they are regulated. But for some reason, they are not trusted by these regulations to dispense milk in liquid form or in dried powder. It just serves no purpose to exclude them. This is why these amendments are so important: to exclude the most accessible settings from the ability to provide milk and other healthy foods is not just bad for them, it is bad for the children.

I cannot understand for the life of me why one setting is good and the other is bad. But there is another string to this argument: that it is bad not only for the children and the settings themselves, but for the economy. There are 1.8 million dairy cows in this country, with a herd size average of 225, and that number has doubled in the last 50 years since 1975.

Significant parts of the West Country are devoted to dairying—milk production, cheese production and so forth. I see my noble friend Lady Williams sitting in front of me on the Front Bench. She is from the Cheshire plains and will know better than anybody the importance of the work dairy farmers do, rising early to milk and care for their cow herds, come rain or shine, suffering as they have in the last two months a 30% reduction in the price of liquid milk from the dairies.

It is not just the children who need all the help they can get; it is our dairy farmers too. While this is, of course, a subsidiary point to the main thrust of Amendment 98 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran, it is a consideration. The main thrust is that we must stop this arbitrary division that forms gaps between different sorts of settings, saying that only the NHS can be trusted to dispense milk, and that childminders and the CMAs are not to be trusted.

If we really have the interests of the child at heart, we need to have as many settings as possible that can dispense good food and milk and associated products, at times that are convenient for the busy lives families lead, rather than just straitjacketing them into the nine to five and thinking that is good enough.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I support both amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in particular Amendment 113 on the school food improvement scheme. I am incredibly glad to see how many steps the Government are taking, but there are still things we need to work on. The noble Baroness referred to Professor Defeyter’s work on the finances and how, with big schools versus small schools, a lot of the money gets lost. It also happens with councils that are so cash-strapped that they sometimes take some of the money.

We are still living in a country where we have a postcode lottery on food. Some schools do amazing jobs with limited resources and some schools really do not. Nobody can now dispute the fact that the free school lunch, or any school lunch, is incredibly important to children. Yet we hear too often about schools that allow only 20 minutes for lunch, in which time you are meant to play, make a call, go to the toilet and have lunch, which is clearly going to be seen as a secondary part of a school.

It is also secondary in that the school catering departments at the moment get very little training. I wonder whether the Minister is aware of a scheme in the department being run by Chefs in Schools and a lot of philanthropic organisations to actively train chefs to go into schools and work with them to improve the quality. For the same amount of money, you can have really good quality and transform children’s lives.

Finally, nursery is equally important in getting kids eating the right stuff right from the beginning. I absolutely support that we need milk, but children also get fed there and those meals tend to fall outside of anything right now, as far as I can see. I would be interested to know what the Government will do.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in the third group cover free school meals, the nursery milk scheme, the Healthy Start scheme and school food. Ensuring that every child has access to nutritious food and support is fundamental to their health, development and ability to learn. We know that good nutrition starts early and that simple measures, whether access to milk or balanced school meals, can make a lasting difference.

I turn to government Amendments 111 and 112. Last year the Government announced that from September 2026, every child in a household receiving universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. This decisive action will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and save families around £500 per child each year. The amendments will enshrine this crucial commitment in law and ensure its successful delivery.

A child is currently eligible for free school meals if they attend a state-funded school in England, their household is in receipt of universal credit and the household’s income is less than £7,400. Government Amendment 112 creates a new category of free school meals, to be known as expanded free school meals, which will apply to that cohort of children in receipt of universal credit but with a household income greater than £7,400. This will ensure that free school lunches are provided on request to all pupils from households in receipt of universal credit and that state-funded schools in England will be under a duty to provide meals to those eligible children.

We will support over half a million more children in this way. Providing the most disadvantaged children with a healthy lunch each school day will help secure their education and improve their future prospects.

Government Amendment 111 will deliver the practical implementation of the free school meals expansion. The Department for Education relies on the provisions of the Education Act 2005 to process income and benefits data from other government departments so that it can check and confirm a child’s eligibility for free school meals. The scope of this power is, however, limited. This amendment will amend the 2005 Act to enable the department to identify whether a child is eligible under the current free school meals criteria or the expanded free school meals criteria and then communicate this to local authorities, parents and schools so that they in turn may determine whether a child is also eligible for other education benefits and funding.

Sexual Harassment in Educational Settings

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate identifies some of the concern that has been expressed in recent days—including by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology—about the use of Grok. As she identifies, the issue goes much wider than that, which is why we need support for schools to ensure appropriate filtering, monitoring and use of AI and why we need to take strong action against companies using AI for some of the reasons that have been identified recently with respect to Grok. Some of that action is being taken in legislation already going through this House.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a follow-up question to the previous one. As I understand it from Ofcom, the maximum fine that X will receive for having Grok on its website is £18 million. This is a pathetic fine for a company of this size. Do we not have any more robust tools to stop this type of behaviour?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As I say, the Technology Secretary has already made it clear that X needs to deal urgently with the issue of Grok. Ofcom has already contacted X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK. If services fail to adhere, Ofcom can impose fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue and, in the most serious cases of non-compliance, could apply to the courts to block services.

Free School Meals

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Boycott]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that schools’ core budgets in more deprived communities are not disproportionately used to meet the costs of providing free school meals.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education, and the Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government already spend £1.5 billion annually supporting the provision of free and nutritious meals for around 3.4 million children. We have set aside a further £1 billion over the multi-year spending review period to fully fund our significant expansion of free meals to all households in receipt of universal credit from September 2026. This new entitlement will mean that more than 500,000 disadvantaged children will begin to access free meals.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Government very much for extending the remit of free school meals—that is excellent news. I declare my interest as chair of Feeding Britain. One of our trustees, Professor Greta Defeyter, does a lot of research into how the economics of free school meals work. She has found that the caterers are charging so much that schools are being forced to raid their teaching and learning budgets—literally the budgets they need to buy books—to pay for this. In Wales and Scotland, the budget for school meals is 60p to 70p more. What will the Government do to close this gap, given that the bill will get much higher next September, as she just alluded to?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As I have outlined, we are fully funding the expansion, with £1 billion additional funding over the next spending review period. We provide the funding for free school meals through the national funding formula, and it is within the ability of schools to be able to shift money around in order to fund this. I understand the noble Baroness’s point about the pressures that food inflation may be causing, but it is right to prioritise additional funding on broadening the entitlement rather than on funding caterers.

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.