Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

May I start by congratulating my noble friend on his grandfatherly duties. He makes an important point about the contribution that parents and indeed grandparents can make to children’s earliest development. That is why, as part of the best start family hubs, we are providing support for parents. We are supporting them to read with their children and grandchildren and helping them with behaviour issues—which I am sure my noble friend’s grandchild definitely will not have. All these things are very helpful. We will move as quickly as possible on the action to improve the recruitment of early years workers with the £4,500 financial incentive and the professional register, both of which recognise the urgency of ensuring that we have the right people in place to deliver the quality of care and education that our youngest children deserve.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement; I think it is fantastic. Like the noble Viscount, I have become a grandparent reasonably recently, but I am very struck by the difference from when I had my daughter, which is now 41 years ago. First, I got three nights in hospital, and, secondly, the moment I got back, the health visitor was at the door. I did not have to ask for the health visitor; she was there. She came two to three times a week for what seemed like most of a year, and she was absolutely wonderful.

My daughter had twins; they went to term but were a bit early and were jolly small. The moment the little ones could survive without their heated blanket, we were out; no health visitor turned up, until finally one did, and there was very little help with breastfeeding. That is the thing I really want to ask the Minister about: under this, will you have to go and search for the help, or will the help come to you? I ended up with my daughter getting her people on the phone and there were lots of panics—people are scared when they have little ones around. Everything I have heard from the Minister is simply amazing, but it misses that first crucial week or two when you are back home with your bundle of joy.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right that the healthcare and support that families receive through the 1,001 critical days from conception to age two and beyond can have a lifelong impact. That is why our colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are also focusing on ensuring that every child has the healthiest possible start in life, including by improving maternity care, strengthening health visiting services, increasing access to vaccinations and taking steps to reduce tooth decay in children. As the noble Baroness said, strengthening the health visiting services is particularly important for those parents bringing home their bundles of joy, with all the challenges that they bring with them.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I tabled two amendments in this group. The first, Amendment 202, follows on in a complementary manner to the amendment moved so excellently by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, because it addresses the cost issue of uniforms by asking for the mandating of second-hand uniforms in schools.

I am sure the Minister will say that there is already statutory guidance encouraging schools to provide secondary sales of school uniforms, but her own department did a survey in 2023 and found that some 65% of parents said that their schools provided second-hand sales. That is a significant minority of schools that are not providing it.

It has been estimated that more than 1.4 million quality items of school uniform are lost every year, which is a loss to parents in savings, a cost to us all when local authorities have to deal with the disposal of those uniforms and a cost to the environment in dealing with the plastics and the carbon that comes from disposing of those garments.

In this amendment, I call for the mandating of schools to provide second-hand uniforms. If the Minister is not able to agree to that at the end of noble Lords’ remarks, I hope that in the refresh of the upcoming sustainability and climate change strategy she might think about the issue of uniforms, which was not in the previous strategy. Clearly, looking at the affordability of uniforms and sustainability could a be a win-win for parents and for the environment.

My second amendment, Amendment 202A, deals with a slightly different issue: the health impacts of school clothing on young people and the inclusion of forever chemicals, PFAS, in much of the clothing that young people are wearing. They are called forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment. There is now emerging evidence of significant negative health impacts in terms of cancer, impacts on fertility and, crucially for young people, neuro development. These PFAS are mainly picked up by people through the skin. For young people, this is a really important issue.

PFAS are added by the manufacturers to give a stain-resilient quality or make clothes ironing-free. But these stain-resistant surfaces do not last—they will be kept on an item of clothing for a maximum of 10 to 20 washes before they are washed away—so there is a limited benefit for a long-term potential health impact on our young people. For this reason, both France and Denmark have got rid of PFAS in clothing. My amendment would insist that the Government stop allowing PFAS to be used in school clothing because of the impact on the welfare of our children.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 202A in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bennett. This is a fantastically important amendment, and I will be very distressed if the Government do not seize the moment as the knowledge comes into view about what these kinds of chemicals in cheap clothes provide and are putting into our children’s systems.

Jeremy Grantham, who many people may know, has been one of the main funders of climate change research across the world over the last 40 years and indeed was one of the funders behind the LSE and Nick Stern report. I met him about three weeks ago and he said he is no longer providing climate change funding, largely because he thinks it is a more or less foregone conclusion that things are not going well. He has turned his entire industry and scientific might behind looking at PFAS and the chemicals that are in not just our clothing but our soils.

Let us look specifically at clothing around the world. American Airlines has recently been sued because it produced very cheap uniforms for its stewards and stewardesses. They have started to develop incredible ranges of different skin illnesses and internal illnesses. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, found, research in Denmark has shown that prenatal contact to cheaply made fabrics with PFAS in them has led to reductions in IQ among children. France is banning all school uniforms containing PFAS from next year.

Interestingly, Fidra, a big company that works on and looks at the environmental impact of chemicals, says that people want these chemicals in clothing because it is very easy to wash, it dries almost immediately and you never need to iron it. But interestingly, it discovered that people treat these clothes in exactly the same way as they treat something of better quality. Every time you wash it—it is not just when you put it on your skin—bits come off in the washing machine. They are now in circulation: they are in breast milk, placenta and our plants. Our plants are looking at 25% reduction in whole fertility within the next 10 years.

Some of the work that Jeremy Grantham is doing is looking at male fertility. Some people may say we have too many people in the world, but this is probably not the way we want to do it—crashing male fertility and all sorts of things. These are dangerous.

As everybody knows, I have worked on ultra-processed foods. One of the interesting things about these chemicals is that a single one of them on their own may not be dangerous, but they are if you mix them up. That is the whole point of chemistry. That is why we went into chemistry labs for our GCSEs and had fun making things explode. They change.

Those chemicals go into these fabrics. They can be manufactured at immense volume and cheapness. As I say, it is not just the school uniforms but the stuff kids are buying when they can buy 20 garments for 20 quid through a company such as Shein. These are dangerous. We can stop this.

I completely support all the amendments in this group. Yes, I want school uniforms because they are fair, and I want them to be cheap, but I do not want them to be dangerous to our children. Please can the Government start doing something about it? Europe is ahead of us. Other countries are ahead of us. We can do this.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Parminter. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, just made an extremely powerful case for Amendment 202A, to which I attached my name. In the interests of time, I shall mostly focus on the two amendments that appear in my name in this group, which are Amendments 202B and 484.

Amendment 202B is essentially an expansion of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. She focused on the health impacts of PFAS; I am focusing on the broader issues of the health of school uniforms. This amendment

“seeks to allow the Secretary of State to regulate school uniforms, given the human and environmental health risks they represent”.

That is not written in the amendment, which is written broadly to have a review within a year, but I say that in the explanatory statement and that I am particularly thinking about

“artificial fibres and chemical constituents”

—so it includes PFAS, but is much broader than that.

This is actually a narrower version of an amendment I tabled to the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill that was debated on 11 December. I included a great deal of evidence in that that I do not have time to include today, but I said then that these products, chemicals, plastics and other substances are accumulating in our bodies day by day. That picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott: we have a cocktail effect of bodies being bombarded from our clothing, our environments and our food. We are talking about young people, who are going to live for decades, accumulating more and more PFAS and more and more plastics in their bodies.

This is particularly important when we think about school uniforms, because we are forcing pupils to wear them. This is the state mandating that our children wear clothing which is highly likely to be doing them harm. Think about how it will go from the clothing into people’s bodies: for a blazer, a pupil is running for the school bus or running around in the playground. Smaller children touch their clothing and then they put their hand in their mouth, or they touch something else. They will be ingesting whatever is in their clothing.

It is literally week by week now that we get more medical and research reports on the impacts, but just this week microplastic particles have been found in human semen and female reproductive fluids. There is great concern about the potential impacts on fertility, as has already been referred to. There are microplastics in samples of human penises, and this may have a role in erectile dysfunction. There is a study out just this morning from the Netherlands. Every person in the Netherlands—and there is no reason to think that we are any different—has multiple types of PFAS in their blood, and virtually all of them are above healthy limits. We do not have a detailed explanation of exactly what impact this cocktail has, but we apply the precautionary principle to the environment, so surely we should apply it to the health of our young people and the clothing we are putting them in.

As has already been referred to, France is moving towards a ban on most PFAS imports and manufacture, and by 2030 will ban all PFAS-treated textiles. I note that, in the debate on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, who is not currently in his place, got quite concerned about what had made his shirt non-iron. I had to go away and look this up: it is formaldehyde. Europe has stepped up and has stronger regulations on formaldehyde exposure in products than we do.

In 2019, the National Trust recognised that the artificial fibre fleeces it supplied to its staff and put in its shops shed an estimated 1.7 grammes of microfibres every time they were washed. It was also concerned that, when people walked through its wonderful, beautiful, natural environments with them, they were shedding plastics everywhere. This is, of course, an environmental health issue as well as a human health issue, but in the context of this Bill, the human health issue for children and young people is overwhelming.

Shifting topics slightly, my second amendment in this group, Amendment 484, is about school hair requirements. It says:

“Pupils must not be denied opportunities to take part in classes, or any other school activities, by reason of their hair style or cut, unless for reasons of health and safety”.


The origins for it go back to a couple of events I have been to with the World Afro Day campaign group. To quote Michelle de Leon, the founder of that group, the bias against Afro hair has become ingrained in some parts of the education system.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, when the Minister said that we are working across government, what actually is happening? Is there a review? Is there something specific about school uniforms? Is it just about PFAS? Can we get some details so that we who are concerned can keep an eye on it?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The point I was making was that it relates to all clothes and is considering the risks from PFAS used in textiles, but I will be happy to provide further information about how that work is being carried out. In the interim, our statutory guidance is already clear that it is important that schools consider sustainability and ethical supply chains, as well as engaging with parents and pupils when tendering for uniform contracts. I know that many high street retailers already offer school uniforms without PFAS treatments for many of the reasons that noble Lords have outlined today. Furthermore, 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. We already have robust systems in place to identify the impact of chemicals under the UK registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—UK REACH—and to regulate them effectively.

On Amendment 484 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, discrimination has no place in our schools or, in fact, in society. Our guidance is clear that in setting uniform and appearance policies, including on hair, we expect schools to meet their existing obligations under equalities law not to discriminate unlawfully. Guidance also already exists for schools on preventing hair discrimination, published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The noble Baroness had a lengthy list of cases. I do not know the details of all those, but I think it is reasonable for schools to develop and implement behaviour policies, to uphold school rules and to use sanctions that are fair and proportionate, and that could well also relate to uniform and expected appearance within schools.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I invite the noble Baroness to acknowledge that this Government, since they were elected, have committed £1 billion to school meals. It would be nice if she would mention that, as well as everything else, which I am sure we all agree about.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

Thank you—I acknowledge that more money is going in and absolutely acknowledge that there is an expansion of free school meals. I am only worried about the evidence that we have seen. Yesterday, we had a whole-day meeting of Feeding Britain, and I am afraid that a lot of the information that we heard is that this is not there yet. I hope that it filters down, because it is a very straightforward thing to do.

I have put a lot of things into the amendment, which is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Walmsley, on what school standards should be. It is a good thing for the Government to aim at, and I hope that they will look favourably on the amendment.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 183D, 186A and 187A in this group. I am delighted that the Bill will deliver on Labour’s manifesto commitment to offer universal breakfast clubs for all primary-age children, which will be a significant step towards ending morning hunger in schools across England. But there is a concern that the policy appears to be designed solely for mainstream pupils and, as a result, risks failing to meet the needs of those with special educational needs and disabilities. My amendments would make school breakfast provision more accessible to SEND pupils and create a more individualised approach to the provision.

Although most pupils with SEND are in mainstream education, special provision is vital for many children and young people across the country, for whom there are different barriers to accessing education, which need to be acknowledged and supported by government. The format in the Bill for universal free breakfasts applies only to primary-age pupils, which would mean excluding secondary-age pupils in special schools from breakfast provision. That is inequitable and, within those schools, ultimately unworkable. Special schools are more likely than mainstream schools to be all-through settings, where children can be taught based on need rather than age. My Amendments 183D and 186A would therefore extend the school breakfast provisions in the Bill to include secondary-age pupils in special schools.

Many of these children also access school transport funding, and it is vital that schools and local authorities work with families to create flexible transport approaches, so that anyone wanting to access breakfast clubs is then enabled to. Additionally, some children with SEND access one-to-one support during the school day. This support is a vital key in unlocking the education system to these young people. Without funding for this support being extended to breakfast clubs, they face the prospect of being locked out. For that reason, I support Amendment 186 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would ensure that breakfast clubs are accessible for all pupils with SEND.

Breakfast clubs need to be accessible, but they should be able to deliver a mixed-model approach to breakfast provision. That means being delivered in the classroom or in nurture groups, as opposed to being available only in the normal dining area. Breakfast clubs are harder to access for pupils with SEND, which is why, in special school provision, only 16% of schools partnering with the charity Magic Breakfast operate a breakfast club without another style of school breakfast being delivered as well. I was privileged to witness that at first hand when I visited Eko Pathways school in East Ham recently. More than just instructive, it was an absolute joy to see the children so enthusiastically engaging in the breakfast club. I was struck by the way in which some of them, after queuing for their food, then took it to their classroom and began to tuck in as the lesson began. I accept that that would not be appropriate for mainstream pupils, but it was clearly an important part of making the delivery of breakfast at Eko Pathways school so effective in preparing pupils for their lessons each day. For that reason, I am happy to signal my support for Amendment 187 in the name of my noble friend Lady Lister.

I turn to my Amendment 187A, which calls for the Secretary of State to gather and then publish detailed information on the state of breakfast club provision in schools. Of course, the Department for Education will monitor the overall uptake levels of school breakfast provision, which is the key metric in understanding how far-reaching the impact of the policy is proving to be. I believe that the DfE should gather representative data on the characteristics of those receiving breakfast in schools, such as eligibility for free school meals, eligibility for the pupil premium and inclusion on the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index, which has been referred to in previous groups today. That list is not exclusive, but these are the measures that include children and young people most at risk of morning hunger.

I believe the DfE should also consider collecting what is known as satisfaction data from pupils, teachers and caregivers. Without underlying metrics such as satisfaction, it is difficult to improve and augment the policy to increase its reach. Finally, impact measurements should be considered. These can include measuring positive effects on attendance, behaviour and health and well-being, as well, of course, as educational achievement further down the line. The charity Magic Breakfast collects data in relation to these, through both school surveys and academic studies. I hope my noble friend will agree that the Government should consider a balance of such methods to ensure robust data collection. I suspect she may say in her response that this is not required in the Bill, and I would accept that if she would also give a commitment that the data will be collected along the lines that I have suggested.

However, outside of the legislative structure, the Government are showing a commitment to developing better evaluation of policy. The Evaluation Task Force says that it drives

“continuous improvements in the way government programmes are evaluated in order to inform decisions”.

Including data collection and publication in the Bill would be a strong indicator of the Government’s commitment to evaluation.

The risk of not collecting this data is shown by the Welsh Government example. I refer to Amendment 187B in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, regarding impact assessment. I believe that six months is too short a timescale for meaningful assessments to be made. To some extent, the same might be said of Amendment 190 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Cass, but a period of 12 months would at least allow a full school year to be assessed.

Data collection is essential. Primary school free breakfast provision has been available in Wales since 2007, but the Welsh Government do not publish, nor seemingly even record, significant data on the effectiveness of their policy. That might explain why there have been no substantial changes to that policy, which has been in place for some 18 years.

In 2022, Wales was included in Magic Breakfast’s Hidden Hunger report, which found that, despite the legislation being intended to reach all primary schools in Wales, 85% of disadvantaged pupils were not reached by the provision. In another 2022 report, the Child Poverty Action Group and Parentkind noted that school breakfast clubs in Wales were

“not being made available to all families, despite a universal free primary breakfast offer”.

Wales was a leader in school breakfast provision, but a lack of monitoring risks the policy falling behind. Robust data collection being mandated by the Bill could avoid the risk of England falling to the same eventuality.

Lastly, I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, is not in his place to speak to his Amendment 184, which seeks to ensure that the Government underwrite the cost of providing breakfast clubs. Although it is not appropriate for that to be in the Bill, I sympathise with the noble Lord’s point. Indeed, this point was also made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Bennett, in their contributions. I was of course pleased to see the rollout in April of the first 750 schools providing free breakfasts for almost 200,000 pupils, but some schools have either not put themselves forward to participate or, in a few cases, have even withdrawn, citing financial reasons.

We all want the breakfast club provisions to be in place the length and breadth of the country, and eventually that will happen. I hope my noble friend the Minister will have something to say on the question of schools having their costs covered to ensure that the rollout can be completed as quickly as possible.

Early Years Provision: Bell Review

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We are carrying out a short qualifications reform review precisely to identify the qualifications where there are particular needs for learners or for the economy—in this case, childcare. Unlike the previous Government, we are saying that where we can see for both those reasons that there is a particular need for qualifications, we will continue to fund them in the system. As I identified earlier, we are also supporting the development of a T-level, which will provide a very good and rigorous route for young people into the childcare sector. Also, through the “Do Something Big” campaign we are encouraging more people to consider a career in early years and childcare, which can have such an enormous impact on children’s lives.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, what is so encouraging is the way fathers are now involved in looking after children, and it is very important—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we will turn to the Cross Benches next, and then we will hear from the noble Lord.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, we have just come to the end of a report on ultra-processed and HFSS foods. When it comes to early years nutrition, it is quite a Wild West out there. For a start, we have the lowest rate of breastfeeding in Europe and the OECD, because there is very little support. When you get on to infant feeding formula, a lot is marketed at babies who are younger than six months and there is extreme confusion about the way that milks can be advertised.

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My question is: will the Government take heed of our report and look at the way products are marketed to mothers when they are young, vulnerable and not very well off?

Children’s School Meals

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Department for Education has already been working closely with our colleagues in the Department of Health. I absolutely agree with the point that the noble Lord is making.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, just to correct the Minister, all new science shows that it is calorie intake of the wrong kind, such as in ultra-processed food, that causes obesity. While exercise keeps you healthy, it does not take off weight unless you are prepared to run a marathon every day. One thing the Government could do if they are serious about this is to extend the salary limit at which you can get free school meals. Currently, you have to be on universal credit, earning under £7,500—that is fantastically little—before your child gets a healthy, decent meal once a day—made up, ideally, of decent ingredients. Can the Government look at this again?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness knows, we keep the eligibility for free school meals under constant review, but the House is also aware that eligibility for free school meals has never been higher. This Government introduced universal infant free school meals and free school meals in further education. Now, in schools, 1.9 million of the most disadvantaged pupils are eligible for free school meals.

Food Price Rises: Public Sector Food Provision

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As always, I will be interested if the noble Baroness has specific examples to share with the department, as that is not the picture we are getting. The picture that we are getting is that there are, of course, pressures on food inflation, but clear standards on nutritional value continue to be met. There is a real focus on reducing waste and, in some cases, that means reducing the number of options available to pupils, but not the quality.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, based on research we have done at Feeding Britain, I can say that around £88 million every year does not get through to the school food budget. One reason is that poorer pupils are unable to roll over their daily allowance. It has also been true that councils, to a lesser extent, and schools themselves—because food is something that you can reduce while still delivering a meal—have been using some of that money because they are so cash-strapped. No blame is afforded here, because budgets everywhere are very tight, but would the Minister agree that this is an extremely false economy? Will she agree to talk to me and Feeding Britain about whether we can review it and ring-fence the money? As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out, the amount is not enough at the moment to make sure that these meals are healthy and nutritious. For many kids, it is all that they are getting.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that schools need to use the funding provided for them to feed the children eligible for free school meals. We are monitoring the implementation of our policies, and we are investing in a pilot training scheme for school governors so that they are well equipped to understand what is happening in their schools.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 118L in my name and I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Although we were too late to get him on the list, this is also supported by the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead. He was the first chair of Feeding Britain, a job he passed on to me.

This is a very simple amendment which would mean that families of pupils who are eligible to receive free school meals are automatically registered rather than having to opt in. By the Government’s best estimate, 11% of children who are eligible are not registered. This could mean that up to 200,000 children in England are missing out on both a nutritious meal and the pupil premium.

We have investigated this a great deal at Feeding Britain. We know that it works. When the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, was in the other place he attracted cross-party support from 125 Members, but that Session drew to a close before his Bill could receive a Second Reading. As well as the support, my amendment has the advantage of being proven to work. When automatic registration has been piloted, as it was under the old housing benefit regime in the Wirral, more than 600 additional children were automatically signed up.

The Children’s Commissioner, the Local Government Association and Henry Dimbleby, in the national food strategy, have all supported this, and this amendment really goes with the grain of government policy in other areas, such as the warm home discount and cost of living payments. Even my own pension arrives automatically, whether I want it or not. It seems quite extraordinary that a child has to opt in to get a meal, especially now in the cost of living crisis. This is a very simple and straightforward amendment and I urge the Government to accept it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am aware of the hour and will be extremely brief. I just want to speak in favour of Amendment 118L, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I want to make two points in addition to what she said, while associating myself with what she said and noting that the noble Lord, Lord Field, has also shown his support for this.

First, the children who are the most vulnerable, from families which for whatever reason—language difficulties, other disadvantages—may find it difficult to navigate the system, are those who need those free school meals the most. If we do not have an automatic opt-out system, the people who miss out will include the most vulnerable.

The other point is that, a couple of weeks ago, a survey by LACA, the school caterers’ trade body, demonstrated that despite the number of pupils eligible for free school meals rising very significantly, more than half of the caterers surveyed were seeing the number of free school meals that they were providing going down. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, we know that so many families are struggling with the cost of living crisis. This very modest amendment would at least ensure that those who are eligible for free school meals are getting them. I would like to see free school meals expanded much further and perhaps renamed to take away some of the stigma. This would simply ensure that people who are entitled to something get it. They are not only entitled to it; people desperately need these healthy school meals.

Children: Rights and Well-being

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, there is a broad range of work across government that promotes children’s rights and well-being, which is set out in the report that we provided to the UN in November last year at the conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the UNCRC, as the noble Baroness mentioned. The report summarises the work of 14 government departments. My department has strong working relationships with other departments on children’s rights. I am confident that these will continue in the run-up to the next reporting cycle in 2021.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of Feeding Britain. We recently saw new and disturbing academic research. Children in Britain who are on free school meals are allocated £2.20 or £2.30, depending on where the school is. It has come to light that councils are now so broke because of the cuts that they are taking around 50p of that allocation for their needs. When the money then gets to the school, it is also so broke because of budget cuts that it nicks another 50p. This is not malice but just need. In too many instances now, the actual value of the food that we are serving to our hungry, needy kids—as is their right—is 82p. Can the Government assure us that they will look into these figures and ring-fence that amount? Food is always the bit that gets cut, either by a hungry mother or, in this case, a hungry council.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am certainly happy to look into the figures that the noble Baroness refers to. If she has any example of a local authority where she feels that excessive amounts are being top-sliced away from food provision, I would be interested to hear of it. I have not seen examples of that myself.

National School Breakfast Programme

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I completely agree with the noble Lord on the importance of a healthy breakfast for children—there is masses of evidence to support the benefits. It improves concentration and provides nutrition, which does not always happen at home. I agree with that. We are reviewing the future of the programme. We had our spending settlement letter and announcement from the Chancellor only yesterday. We want to ensure that we can extend this programme in an effective way. We have targeted it initially in the opportunity areas, which, as noble Lords will know, are some of the areas of greatest deprivation. We want to create a system that is sustainable into the long term.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

No one has any doubt about the importance of breakfast and yet, at the moment, apart from the scheme mentioned by my noble friend Lord Curry, almost all these breakfasts are being provided by charities such as Magic Breakfast. However, even Magic Breakfast reckons that 1.8 million children go to school hungry every morning. Surely this matter should not be haphazardly funded by the sugar tax or by desperate mothers and charities such as Magic Breakfast. Does the Minister agree that this should be a responsibility of the Department for Education and of all of us because we know how fundamentally important it is?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Baroness makes important points. There is both a macro and a micro issue here. For example, today I looked at the LIFFE futures price for wheat: it is £130 a tonne. When I last worked on my father’s farm in 1978 it was about £100 a tonne. Food has never been cheaper. We have had a revolution in the provision of food in this country and, indeed, in the western world. We need to understand why these families are struggling to produce meals at home. A great deal of that centres around education. I appeared before a Select Committee yesterday on holiday hunger and we need to learn a lot more about this. We have introduced the infant free school meals in the past couple of years. That programme is feeding 1.5 million children and has an 85% take-up.

Schools: Free School Meals

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Boycott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to maintain appropriate standards in the delivery of free school meals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, this Government want pupils to be healthy and well nourished. It is important that all pupils have access to healthy and nutritious meals at school, including those eligible for free school meals. We encourage a balanced diet and healthy life choices through school funding legislation and guidance. Our school food standards mean that the food children eat at school is healthy and foods high in fat, salt and sugar are restricted.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. I wish it were entirely true. Through the Children’s Future Food Inquiry, I have spoken directly to children who live in poverty and for whom these meals are a lifeline. The £2.30 a day allowance is simply not enough, unless the school is very creative, to provide daily meals and snacks. I have heard from children who were charged up to £2 for half a small pizza. In some schools, where the water fountains are broken, they were paying 90p for a bottle of water. We spend £458 million a year on school meals, but no monitoring system is in place in England and standards are very uneven. When free school meals were extended under the coalition, a post was created to monitor them, but that person was let go after a year. Do the Government not agree that this is an extremely short-sighted approach and that the post should be reinstated immediately?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I will certainly take the noble Baroness’s suggestion back to the department for consideration. It is, however, a statutory requirement that all state schools provide free drinking water to their pupils. If there is any evidence of schools not delivering that, I would be interested to hear it.