Education and Skills Reform

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Lords Chamber

I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, as ever, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the House. Last week’s PISA results placed English pupils in the top 10 in the world for reading, maths and science. That is down to the dedication and hard work of our teachers in executing almost 30 years of reform begun under new Labour and continued by the Conservatives. I am delighted that this Statement acknowledges that success, but it makes the dismantling of the system which has given generations of children greater life chances much harder to justify. It is laudable that the Government wish to address what is not working and to do more for those not in education, employment or training. We on these Benches share that desire. But good intentions are not the same as good decisions. The parts of the system which are working so well should be left alone.

Since 2016, schools have been judged on the progress every pupil makes between the ages of 11 and 16. We know this measure as Progress 8. It is a reliable measure because it adjusts for intake, so it quickly weeds out the schools coasting on good results in affluent areas without significant improvement and reveals the schools with remarkable outcomes for children in our most deprived communities—top schools like Tauheedul girls’ school, Mercia in Sheffield and Michaela. It is such a good measure that the Government’s own independent reviewer, Professor Francis, recommended keeping Progress 8 completely unchanged. But the Government have overruled her, and we know from the February consultation what overruling her means. It means broadening the subjects for lower-attaining pupils to “reward inclusion”—if ever there were words to make the heart sink. Can the Minister assist us here? What evidence did the department possess to justify overruling its own expert reviewer?

There is a very bold claim about NEETs in this Statement that the overfocus on academic pathways is a major factor driving the growing NEETs crisis, which has produced the current 1 million NEETs. Now is not the time for an economics debate, so I am going to resist that temptation, but we have data on this. Wales has been rolling out precisely the kind of skills-based, less exam-focused curriculum now proposed by this Government for England. On the results published on 8 September, Wales scored well below England in maths, reading and science. The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that 11% of Welsh 16 to 18 year-olds are NEET against 5% to 9% across the rest of the United Kingdom, and that disadvantaged children in England score 30 points higher than disadvantaged children in Wales.

The Statement also cites 1.5 million persistently absent children as part of its reasoning against the current academic curriculum. I am delighted to talk about school absence; we do not talk about it enough and the toll it takes on children’s outcomes, and parents need to know more about that. The Education Policy Institute has found that the widening of the disadvantage gap since 2019 is entirely explained by higher absence rates among poorer pupils. Again, there is no causal link with the academic curriculum. We have the data. Persistent absence is 18% in England, 28% in Scotland, and 37% among Welsh secondary pupils—20% higher in Wales under the same skills-based, less academic curriculum the Government now propose for England. While absence rose across every UK nation after the pandemic, in England, with its boring old academic curriculum, the rate is the lowest and falling.

We have heard a lot this week since the Statement about the abolition of resits. None of us wishes children to resit exams for the sake of it, but, again, we have data on this. Solid LSE research cited by Alan Milburn comparing students of identical ability who fall just either side of the grade boundary finds that just failing as opposed to just scraping a pass in English GCSE makes a young person more likely to be out of education and work by 18. At 16, 35% lack the grades, but by 19 it is only 22%, so resits help almost a third of those to transform their life chances. Can the Minister tell us what happens to that group if resits are abolished, and what is going to replace resits?

Vocational pathways are the centrepiece of the new Prime Minister’s and Secretary of State’s education reforms, but, regrettably, from this Statement we are none the wiser as to what these will look like. We still do not know what qualifications we are expecting and when, which means real uncertainty for children and their families. It supposedly launches in two years, but the qualifications are just existing technical awards with any new ones yet to be explored. There is no plan for the specialist teachers, and colleges cannot fill technical posts today. There is no plan for work experience when T-levels already struggle to find placements. There is nothing on who decides which children will take this route, no guarantee of what it leads to and no budget. I ask the Minister: which qualifications will a child starting in September 2028 take? When will we know? Who will decide which children go down this route? Will completing it guarantee a place on a T-level or V-level course or an apprenticeship? And will the Minister guarantee that a child who starts it can return, complete academic GCSEs and go on to A-levels if needed?

I must press the Minister on a few other questions about the timetable. The review was published in November 2025. The Government promised the first teaching of the new curriculum would happen in September 2028, with the final documents by spring 2027 and four terms for schools to prepare. The draft curriculum and the Progress 8 consultation response were due this September. It is now 17 September, the Commons has risen, this House rises this afternoon, and nothing has been published. Can the Minister tell us on what date the draft curriculum will be published? Does the four-terms pledge still stand? And if so, what does that mean for the implementation date? Finally, will the Progress 8 consultation response come before or after schools must set their options for 2027? I thank the Minister in advance for her answers.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this debate on education and skills policy because ultimately it comes down to one question: are we giving every young person the opportunity to build a good-quality life regardless of where they come from?

There is much in our education system of which we should be proud. As we heard earlier, the latest PISA results show that the United Kingdom remains one of the highest-performing education systems in the world, particularly around science, mathematics and reading. Our performance in science has improved since 2022, and we need to acknowledge these achievements. However, we also have to recognise that academic success alone is not enough. The ONS has estimated that more than 1 million young people aged 16 to 24 are currently not in education, employment or training—a figure that has increased over the past year. Alan Milburn’s review, which many of us have spoken about, warns that, without action, one in six young people could be NEET within the next five years. That should be a wake-up call to all of us.

We need an education and skills system that works for young people who want to go to university, but equally for young people who want to become engineers, electricians, nurses, technicians and skilled professionals. The Government’s reforms to post-16 pathways have the potential to provide greater choice, including V-levels and occupational certificates, but choice exists only if young people have access to a genuine range of choices. My concern is that technical education must not become a second-tier route, disproportionately taken by children from poorer backgrounds while affluent families continue to choose the traditional academic pathways. There must be parity of esteem between academic and technical education and, crucially, the ability to move between the two pathways.

A 16 year-old should not be expected to make a decision that permanently determines their future. That is why careers advice is so important. Every young person should have access to high-quality careers guidance and meaningful work experience—an issue that I have often mentioned in your Lordships’ Chamber—so that choices are informed by aspiration and opportunity rather than postcode or family income. We also need to ask whether the system has the capacity to deliver these ambitions. Technical education requires teachers, lecturers, specialist facilities and strong links with employers, yet colleges are already under pressure to recruit and retain staff with the specialist skills required. How will the Government ensure that colleges have the workforce and the funding necessary to deliver these reforms? Will the Minister commit to addressing the disparities in pay and conditions that are making recruitment and retention more difficult?

Apprenticeships must be central to this debate. They can provide a powerful bridge between education and employment, but employers, in particular small and medium-sized businesses, need a system that is simpler, more flexible and financially viable. I welcome the Government’s move towards greater flexibility in the apprenticeship levy, but we should go further: make apprenticeships more attractive, ensure that apprentices are properly paid and give smaller businesses practical support to take on more. We also need regional flexibility. A young person in a rural community should have access to the same breadth of opportunities as someone in a major city. That would require proper workforce planning and greater involvement from regions and employers.

We cannot discuss education and skills reform without mentioning SEND. Too many families are still fighting for support while councils struggle with the financial consequences of a broken system. Reform must put children and families at its centre. That means early identification, sufficient specialist and mainstream provision, a properly funded workforce and meaningful rights to appeal for parents.

Skills are not simply about filling vacancies; they are about giving people the confidence, knowledge and opportunities to shape their own future. If these reforms are to succeed, we need an education system that does not divide young people into winners and losers, academic or vocational, advantaged or disadvantaged. We need a system that says to every young person: your background does not determine your future, and, whatever route you choose, we will give you the opportunity to succeed. That should be the ambitions of education and skills reforms.

Independent Schools: Tax Changes

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for securing this debate and I welcome him back to his place. As I am also relatively new to this House, I have not had the pleasure of spending time with him and am glad that that opportunity may now arise.

I want to start by quoting from what the Minister said in response to questions from me on the repeat Statement earlier today. I had been asking about preserving all that was good in our education system and sought a reassurance that we would do that. The noble Baroness challenged that, saying that there was more work to be done. She said that we should now not

“place in aspic the education system and not recognise the areas where, notwithstanding the progress, there is more work to be done. I am afraid that a disadvantage gap still exists for our children, and it is stubbornly wide. A gap between regions is widening. We have a growing SEND crisis, 1.5 million children persistently absent from school … a doubling of those educated at home since 2019 and now 1 million young people, all educated during the last 16 years, not in education, employment or training. Simply standing still and resting on our laurels will not be good enough for our children”.

Noble Lords might wonder why I have quoted the Minister in this debate. It is to identify that this change was made at a time when there was no possibility of providing the children who were removed from the private system as a result with an excellent education elsewhere in the state system. I will come back to that.

I want first to thank my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for their contributions today. I am grateful that they saved me from repeating the numbers in detail, and my thanks go in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for his comprehensive summary of the facts and the data around the impact of this measure. I even find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, in challenging a review of this policy and the effects that were predicted versus what has since taken place.

Two significant facts have emerged in today’s debate. The first is the data produced around Scotland, and the fact that—as we can already see in England—this change has not had the predicted effect and is costing the Scottish Government a great deal more. Indeed, that cost is predicted to increase. The second point of note is the anomaly created by this Government in making the change, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, with respect to EU law. We have heard plenty about the Government’s predictions and how wrong they were. I will not repeat those, but I have them in mind as we continue.

I hope that the Minister will have heard the collective cry of pain and loss from the speeches on the Opposition Benches today. Real children are at the heart of this, as are real families, and there are hard consequences for all of them. Even if one agreed with the principle of the policy, its timing and implementation were at best indifferent, indiscriminate and punitive. For 50 years since VAT was introduced, education in this country was exempt. That exemption was not removed in a September, at the beginning of the school year, but in the middle. Worse, it was half way through some children’s GCSE and A-level courses. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, it was removed before anything had been done about a special needs system that the Minister has said today is already under extreme strain, with tribunal appeals taking up to 14 months.

The exemption was also removed before a single one of the promised teachers had been recruited, and we have heard from a number of my noble friends about those numbers. There was unquestionable indifference. The Government knew what would follow, not only via debates here and in the other place but from their own policy note: we know that they accepted in advance that children with special needs who moved schools would suffer disruptive impacts, to say the least. The wealthiest absorbed it, and a number of my noble friends have identified this today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Laing, called attention in her very powerful speech to the unfortunate and regrettable Statement by the former Secretary of State for Education that she was interested in 93% of children in the education system. Whatever her intent, it is a message that landed a body blow on the 7%. The families who could not absorb the tax are those we have heard about today. More than 96,000 children at independent schools receive special needs support without a plan. Every one of those families now pays this tax in full. Tim Barrow, a father of three from Hertfordshire—two of them with special needs—withdrew his sons from their independent school to keep his 10 year-old daughter, whose needs were the greatest, in hers. He is quoted as saying that the policy forced him and his wife to determine

“which of our children’s educational needs takes precedence”.

No parent with children with special educational needs should face that; I would never have imagined facing such a thing under a Labour Government. Leanne Gunn, whose son Charlie uses a wheelchair and will be in one for life, took the Government to court alongside other families. She says that she will work all her life to pay his fees because

“there is no other option for him”.

Those are the families who lost. To families of modest means, whose children were at low-fee faith schools, the Court of Appeal observed that they would and could still resort to home education when it found against them and sent the problem back to Parliament.

It was punitive. There is no doubt, from what we have heard today, that it was punitive. No one in government weighed what these schools give to the communities around them and the value of that—not just the economic value, but the human value. I will give some examples of what these schools do. Christ’s Hospital is 470 years old. Of its 900 pupils, 650 hold means-tested bursaries and it provides 15% of all full bursaries in the independent sector. The London Academy of Excellence in Stratford is a free sixth form sponsored and staffed with the support of independent schools. It has produced more than 150 Oxbridge offers in eight years, over one-third of them to pupils on free school meals. I could go on. Every closure extinguished that giving, that community outreach, permanently punishing the children who benefited.

We have seen the beginning of the transition, with applications by independent faith schools to come into the state sector. A very serious issue has arisen at Barnet Hill Academy, where the state system now appears to be allowing and funding a school which mandates the wearing of the hijab for children as young as seven. When this was revealed during the week, the school said it changed its policy. It said it would not be mandated for non-Muslim girls. In this country, it is unlawful to mandate religious dress for any girl of any age and any faith. It is a complete breach of the Equality Act. I hope that, as this has been exposed—perhaps the one silver lining of the whole policy—the Minister will reassure us that this will be addressed promptly.

No Government should have contemplated moving tens of thousands of children and taxing the education of the rest unless and until they could provide every child with a place in an excellent school; until special needs provision worked; and until the teachers they promised were standing in classrooms. At the very least, the Government should set out how they will replace the loss of the community contributions. I support the call from a number of Peers today, including the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for a review into this policy.

To add one last thing, I can reassure my noble friend Lord Black that we will—and have pledged to—repeal this policy.

Office for Students: Academic Misconduct Allegations

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As I think I have already made clear, both I and the Secretary of State have been doing more than just keeping our eye on this. It was important for us yesterday, in our meeting with the vice-chancellor, to have the assurance that she was able to give us that the detail of the reviews would be imminently announced, that the reviews would be carried out independently and that recommendations that came from them would be made available for all of us to consider whether any further action is necessary.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, the department at the centre of this summer’s tragic events is not any university faculty. It trains teachers with public money under DfE accreditation. Parents and schools are entitled to know that those who train our teachers meet the standards that we demand of the teachers themselves. Will the Minister confirm which regulator—the Office for Students, Ofsted or her own department—is responsible and accountable for the integrity of academic qualifications in accredited teacher training providers? Will she accept that nobody in England currently has the power to investigate across institutions? If she agrees with that, will she say which body should do it?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

First, to reiterate what I said, it is right that institutions themselves are responsible for maintaining academic standards. It is a fundamental part of the reason for the success of our higher education system that they continue to maintain high academic standards. The noble Baroness raises an important point about regulation with respect to teacher training, where I think there is a role for Ofsted, but I will come back to her with more detail.

With regard to the university itself, as I have made clear, the Office for Students already has the ability to regulate with respect to academic standards and processes that might be undermining them. She makes an important point, which I touched on earlier, about the extent to which the system itself, rather than simply individual institutions, maintains the quality of academic standards. That is something that we and Universities UK will want to look at in more detail.

Skills, Vocational Training, and Further and Higher Education

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, on securing this excellent debate and my thanks to noble colleagues for their contributions. I am struck yet again by the level of expertise we have in this House and the value that brings when we are talking about such important matters. I have also been saved from many of the points I planned to make by hearing from the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Morris, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and many other colleagues. The best use of time, therefore, is to focus instead on two things I would like to address specifically.

A number of people have referred to the fact—indeed, the review the noble Baronesses have overseen talked about this—that skills do not begin at 14 or 16. These are life skills, and they begin from the very early years. Many noble Lords are aware that this is a passion of mine, and I cannot resist the temptation to address it on this occasion. The very first skills anyone learns are motor skills, speech, relational skills, emotional regulation, and the capacity to learn itself. According to this year’s survey of over 1,000 reception teachers, one in four children started school not toilet trained. Three in 10 could not tell a teacher they were hungry, frightened or needed the toilet. A third could not dress themselves. Many cannot hold a pencil or sit up on the carpet because they do not have the strength built by running, climbing or play. It is beyond tragic. A third, when handed a book, swiped the page as if it were a screen. Reception staff lose two and a half hours of teaching every day helping children catch up.

Last September, 37% arrived not ready, up from 33% the year before. The sharpest regional declines are in the north-east, the West Midlands, the north-west and London. When a peer-reviewed study was done following 8,000 Bradford children for 12 years, those not school ready at four were nearly three times as likely to be out of education, employment and training at 16.

A number of noble Peers today have talked about this being a decade of work. It is a lifetime of work, and it is urgent. Before we even begin to address the skills, the vocational training and the higher and further education issues that so many others have raised today, we need to start urgently to catch these babies and infants at the very beginning of their lives. If we do not, undoing the damage will be too difficult and their chances will already be harmed.

There is hope. In the same survey, 94% of parents wanted national guidance on readiness, and 88% of them believed their own child was ready—but the teachers had that number at only 63%. So there is a gap of parenting knowledge that we cannot and should not neglect.

I know the Minister is looking at all this, and she is aware of my support with everything she is doing in this area. However, I hope she will forgive me if I press further and harder on what else we could be doing and what the Government, in my view, must do. In 2004, Stoke-on-Trent found 64% of its children starting nursery with delayed language. It trained 5,000 practitioners and parents in early attachment and language, and delay fell markedly. Parent Gym, the programme that I founded, a six-week parenting course, was evaluated by the University of Warwick. It found large gains in parents’ confidence in skills at the end of just six weeks, which delivered outcomes in the primary schools that ran it.

The Government’s milestone is 75% school ready by 2028, and there is no time to waste. Once these years are gone, it cannot be undone. Where is the plan for how the definition of school readiness is to be communicated to every new parent? Where are the system and the measures for assessing that progress? I hope the Minister can tell us when we are going to see a national information campaign about what screens are doing to the developing brains of these babies? From infancy they are being sat in front of screens, which is impeding their life chances.

The other thing I want to talk about very quickly, with time running out, is work readiness. Again, the skills that are needed—soft skills, behavioural skills and experience—are crucial, and many noble Peers today have raised this in their contributions. We have to provide the work experience that has gone from young people. The number of teenagers who now work during the time when they are studying has fallen off a cliff since the 1990s. This has been happening gradually over time; it has halved. The self-esteem and confidence built by earning, turning up, getting paid and seeing the result of your efforts have gone. As the mother of a 16 year-old, I know that it has been impossible for her, despite all her best efforts, to find any summer jobs over the last couple of years.

This country is spending £25 supporting a young person on benefits for every £1 helping them into work. The answer to that arithmetic is not better managed dependency. It is a good start to see in the Milburn recommendations the subsidising of work placements and work experience, but we need to do more.

I am grateful to a number of noble Peers today for raising the AI issue, which is at the heart of some of the issues around employment and jobs. The change is happening so rapidly. Young people need to have soft skills and executive functioning skills, as we talk about it now in SEN—knowing how to organise themselves and how to show up punctually. We take these things for granted, but for the Covid generation these are missing. We need to think about what we do in classrooms, whether in schools or in further education, to equip young people to go into the workplace and thrive.

I am very grateful to so many noble Lords for their contributions, but I single out the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, for his reference to the cadet programme. It is a shame, I always feel, that government has to be run by departments simply because it is so vast, but when we think about our defence needs and the changing face of defence—the fact that it is going to become more technical and home-based, and the fact that we need security in our own borders—we need to think more strategically about mapping and encouraging the jobs that we need for the future. Encouraging young people to take up places with the cadets is just one example of what can be done.

I am very grateful also for the reference today to language skills—an increasingly important issue as we become an ever more diverse and inclusive society. It must be vital for children, to be able to participate in their community, to have those language skills.

Finally, I believe it was the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, but also the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, in her opening speech, who said how important numeracy and literacy are as the foundation stones of all this. It was with a little alarm that I heard the new Prime Minister on Tuesday talking about some of the changes he is proposing. I flag my alarm that I hope he is not intending to rip up the foundation stones of what has been a significantly improving education system in England during the last 20 years, through both Labour and Conservative Governments—work to which the Minister herself contributed. There is a lot more to be said, but time is ticking and I am determined not to get another warning from our Whip.

Schools: Mobile Phone Policy

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Well, it does. If the noble Lord wants to have a look at some of the case studies that we have also provided for schools to support their implementation of the policy that schools should be mobile phone free by default, he will see that lots of schools are successfully using this approach and getting the calmness in the classroom, the focus of pupils and the support of teachers that we all want to see.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister knows, schools with effective phone bans, which means handed in and locked away, are twice as likely to be rated outstanding, with GCSE results one to two grades higher. The poorest pupils gain the most. However, the reality is that this costs money, and providing a Yondr pouch costs about £20 per pupil—some £75 million nationally, in a schools budget of £65 billion. The Government have not provided a penny to schools to do this, and they have to find the money from stretched budgets. Will the Minister commit to funding the actual equipment needed to make our schools phone free?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

This Government have committed to funding a whole range of things, which is why there are considerable increases in school budgets. Nevertheless, it remains for head teachers to choose how to spend that additional investment, given the very clear and now statutory guidance that this Government have provided.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Cash]

50: Clause 4, page 7, leave out from beginning of line 20 to end of line 41 on page 8
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to enable a general discussion of inserted section 16LB.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 50, tabled by my noble friends Lord Lucas, Lord Farmer and Lady Barran, I will speak also to the other amendments in this group: Amendments 54 to 60 and 62 to 63A. I list them at the outset because some of the same points apply in respect of several amendments. These amendments were tabled in the same spirit of probing and collaboration that has seen this House at its very best this afternoon. I pay tribute to the extremely experienced and knowledgeable voices we have heard, including from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and others across the House who unfortunately have departed but who shared their expertise of working in this area and with this challenge.

It is reassuring to us all that we are united in support of data sharing—there appears to be no dispute on that—and the questions are about how we do it and how we make sure that it is easily accessible and safe. It was in that spirit that these amendments were tabled in respect of the consistent identifier. We would be very grateful to the Minister for her assistance in answering some of the questions they give rise to.

It is 52 years since the country first woke up to the dangers of not sharing information, in the case of Maria Colwell. Her school, neighbours and social worker all had concerns, but they were not pieced together. Fifty-two years later, we are here in this House, in spite of the efforts of all parties in the other place to do their very best to find a way to data share at different times since. Thirty years later, the Victoria Climbié case highlighted the same, and we know that, recently, too, no common identifier and shared case file was the issue in the terrible case of Sara Sharif.

However, there are problems with data sharing. In fact, the last time that noble Lords on the opposite Benches were in government, in 2004, the introduction of ContactPoint under the Children Act 2004 had to be abandoned for privacy reasons, to the great regret of all of us who are concerned with these matters and work in this area in some capacity or other. In this sense, I declare my interest as the co-founder of Parent Gym and the owner of Mind Gym.

I turn to the individual amendments, some of which are quite self-explanatory. As the Minister will have seen, Amendment 50 is a general probing amendment to facilitate a discussion looking at the use of a single consistent identifier and the data issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thought I was doing quite well, but I am afraid that I do not have the answer to that. If it is possible to find it out, I will let the noble Baroness know.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister profusely for the detailed response and thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It has been a very helpful, probing debate and an opportunity for expression by so many experts of their concerns in this respect.

I am grateful to the Minister for explaining in such detail the consideration already given to these matters, particularly by reference to the conversations that have been taking place with medical professionals and the Information Commissioner. That is extremely reassuring to know, and we hope that that will continue and will be helpful.

The Government have an unenviable but laudable task ahead to implement this. I am sure I share the view of many of my noble friends in wishing them extremely strong success in achieving it, in the interests of all children and to safeguard against all future possible tragedies. The Minister will be grateful to know that I have nothing further to add, and I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 50.

Amendment 50 withdrawn.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Cash Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as the founder of Parent Gym and the part owner of Mind Gym. Parent Gym is a programme supporting families who have the most need across our country, and I have been advocating for parenting interventions and training for families for over a decade. I am also a commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, something I omitted to record last week when I spoke at Questions.

We welcome a lot in the section of the Bill on care, particularly the encouragement of kinship care. That really has my support, as I hope to see an increase in the number of children who are kept with family when there is no provision available from their own parents. But I am sorry to say that the Bill seems to be entirely silent on three really important areas, which I hope can be rectified in Committee: breaking intergenerational cycles of dysfunction; meeting the national crisis of the shortage of foster carers; and providing real accountability in residential care, which is essential.

We all need two things to ensure that we go into adulthood in a functional way: a minimal amount of trauma, and secure attachment. We can now measure the level of trauma that individual children experience using the adverse childhood experience scoring system. The children we are talking about today are some of the most damaged and vulnerable in the country, with very high adverse childhood experience scores.

But this is not just about measuring: we know now that these scores—this level of trauma—is directly correlated with their health and socioeconomic outcomes. Children with a score of more than four in their adverse childhood experiences are three times more likely to develop heart disease, respiratory issues and type 2 diabetes. They are 15 times more likely to commit acts of violence and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. Trauma has an enormous cost to the child for their future as well as a huge cost to society.

No one speaking today does not care about these children—all children—and want what is best for them, so it is a glaring omission in the Bill that we have not sought to look at where we could break these cycles of dysfunctionality. For a start, we could look at how we can introduce parenting training and mentoring for families. Many of these children are raised by people who had no parenting role model themselves, and that is why the cycle continues. In addition, we could have community partnerships; one of my noble friends referred earlier to the possibility of looking at guardianship. Finally, there is an increased role for health visitors to play with these families; we should increase their number and the number of visits they make. Let us be honest—health visitors are sometimes perceived to be less malign than social services by the family in receipt of those visits.

The second subject I will address is the crisis of foster carers. I hope that increasing kinship care will reduce the need, but it will not solve the gaps. We need secure attachment to primary caregivers as a fundamental for these children’s well-being; we need to stop them being bumped around. The Bill is silent on this, ignoring Josh MacAlister’s 2022 review, the Fostering Network’s 2024 review and the Government’s own strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love, all of which set out recommendations to address this shortage, none of which is in the Bill.

Finally—I will be very brief as I am conscious of time—we have not addressed accountability in residential care homes. I hope that we can look at this in Committee.

“For Women Scotland” Supreme Court Ruling

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her statement of acceptance of the Supreme Court’s judgment and thank the Supreme Court for its courage. This issue has always been about the safety of women and girls in their single-sex spaces for which women, including the Minister, have fought long and hard for. Many of us have been involved in those campaigns over the years. Of course, compassion for all must be at the heart of it, but a significant level of violence has been displayed towards women and girls in the last few days, including violent statements sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, in her capacity as chair of the EHRC. I invite the Minister now to join with me in condemning all gestures and statements of violence that we have seen against women and girls and to have the government support to stand against this.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The violence and abuse received by those women who took forward this action and by others who have taken this position is wholly unacceptable, as is the vandalism of statues that we saw over the weekend. We have already condemned that in the strongest possible terms, and we support action being taken by the Metropolitan Police on that. This is a debate that has not always been carried out in the spirit of respect, recognising the enormously sensitive and difficult issues, and I hope that from now on we will be able to do that.