King’s Speech

Baroness Linforth Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Linforth (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate on the gracious Speech delivered last week by His Majesty the King, although I profess I have first-time speaker nerves. My remarks concern the overlap between children in school and wider societal health. I suggest to the Government a simple, cost-effective solution that I believe would reduce the spread of sickness and improve health and save money.

My subject, clean air for schools, could have been discussed in the debates on education and the economy. Good government is joined up; it does not exist in individual Whitehall departments. The health improvements that come from providing clean air in public spaces have wider benefits. Breathing poor-quality air is a risk to children’s immediate and long-term health.

It is now accepted that outdoor air pollution is a problem. Less appreciated is that indoor air can be up to five times more polluted than outdoor air. The pollutants that can be present in our indoor air include particulate matter, as well as biological aerosol such as airborne viruses, mould, fungal spores, pollen, bacteria et cetera.

Quite apart from increasing sickness, elevated levels of pollutants have been shown to affect a child’s ability to focus, now linked to diminished performance in exams. Children spend most of their time in schools, but with densely packed, poorly ventilated classrooms, it is where they are most likely to pick up sickness. A recent study tracked 816 students and staff across a school year and found that at least 85% had a virus detected and 80% had an illness episode. The study states that:

“Schools are an important setting for infectious disease transmission”,


but they do not have to be.

A brilliant campaign called Clean Air for Kids has started in my home city of Bristol. It was started by a Bishopston resident, Ruth Brooker, when her son was going through cancer treatment and she wanted to get him back to school—or, as many parents would say, back to the “germ factory”. Ruth’s campaign is now going nationwide, beyond just Bristol—another good thing originating from my great city. Her campaign is simple: it is to add an air filter to each school classroom and to regularly open windows to reduce the number of coughs, colds and Covid-19 infections that kids and their teachers catch at school which then spread into the community. It is a cost-effective solution.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson in the other place recently estimated that installing air filters in schools in England would have a one-off cost of around £140 million, while Sky News reported that supply teaching costs in state schools and academies in England last year were £1.4 billion. The running costs are low too. The Clean Air for Kids campaign has calculated that over the 20-year lifetime of an air filter that runs all day in schools during term times, including installation and running expenses, it would cost less than a tenner per child per year to provide pupils and staff with clean air—about the same cost as a coffee and a cake.

This simple solution would quickly pay for itself many times over in the savings from supply teacher budgets. The problem is that very few schools, local education authorities and academy trusts can afford the upfront cost of installation, but the Government easily could. With political leadership, we could transform the lives of schoolchildren, their teachers and their families by improving the quality of indoor air. Additionally, a programme of installing air filters to reduce the spread of sickness in schools will stop others becoming sick too. It will improve productivity, help the economy and drive growth, while protecting the NHS and taking the pressure off benefits budgets. It would have huge well-being outcomes, which in themselves would improve society.

We drink two litres of water and breathe in 11,000 litres of air every day. We would not want our children to drink dirty water, so why would we let them breathe dirty air indoors? Will the Minister share this with the relevant Minister and write to me or, even better, meet me and Ruth Brooker to discuss this further?