Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(4 days, 10 hours ago)
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“(1A) When discharging its duty under subsection (1), the relevant authority must consider the right to British citizenship of looked-after and relevant young people and how that entitlement can be secured to avoid adverse effect on their wellbeing.”
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 152. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, who regrets that he cannot be here—perhaps an absent friend, taking what was said earlier—and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for supporting that amendment.
Amendment 152 would remove the exclusion of immigration, asylum and nationality functions from the new corporate parenting duty. There is strong support throughout the children’s sector for the new corporate parenting duty, but there is also widespread dismay that it explicitly excludes immigration, asylum and nationality matters. This exclusion was raised with the Children’s Minister by the Education Select Committee in the Commons. In a subsequent letter, she explained that
“immigration functions are exempt because the Home Office is already subject to existing statutory duties to safeguard children through Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act”.
Not being a lawyer, I sought advice from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, and I am very grateful for its response. ILPA was clear that Section 55 does not justify the exclusion, as argued by Minister Daby. The Section 55 duty is to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children; this is different from the set of duties in Clause 21(1), which is specific to looked-after children. ILPA advises that the new duties are neither in conflict with nor identical to the existing Section 55 duties.
The Refugee and Migrant Children's Consortium, to which I am also grateful for its help, likewise argues that the new duties are fully complementary to and compatible with Section 55. They are, moreover, very modest, as they apply only so far as compliance with the duties is
“consistent with the proper exercise of a Department's functions”
and is “reasonably practicable”. Nevertheless, they are important. Given that this explanation does not really hold water, can my noble friend the Minister explain exactly which elements of Clause 21 are incompatible with immigration, asylum and nationality functions?
There is an important point of principle at stake here: the principle of universality. As the RMCC points out, children’s social care principles and children’s legislation have hitherto been universal. A carve-out such as this in a landmark piece of children’s legislation sets a dangerous precedent by setting up a two-tier care system that potentially undermines the safeguarding of some babies and children. Barnardo’s has expressed disappointment that a Labour Government should be the first to single out a group of children in this way. The principle of universality is fundamental to respecting children’s rights.
The RMCC has warned that, unamended, this clause would be the first piece of primary legislation relating to children since at least our ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to distinguish children subject to immigration control or nationality considerations as somehow different from other children. It also points out that this undermines the cross-government mission-led approach by creating a carve-out for certain functions. It is at odds with the commitment in the opportunity mission to ensure every child has the best start in life. This has serious implications for the well-being of children affected by the carve-out.
Catch22’s National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum, which is made up of 131 local authority leaving care teams, points out that one in three young people turning 18 and leaving care last year was an unaccompanied asylum-seeker. Catch22 points to the impact that delays in the processing of immigration claims for unaccompanied children has on their mental and physical health and relationships. These children are particularly vulnerable when leaving care.
Become argues that the inclusion of immigration et cetera matters in the corporate parenting duty should
“act as a catalyst to ensure greater collaboration between the Home Office and local authorities”
and help achieve “more trauma-informed practice” in relation to a group who are highly likely to have experienced trauma before their arrival in the UK. Local authorities rely on partner organisations and government departments—the Home Office in particular—for certain functions and support. The removal of Clause 22 would
“help ensure that all children in care facing uncertainty over their immigration or asylum status receive appropriate safeguarding and protection”,
and the same applies to those entitled to register their British nationality.
The need for this was underlined by a newly published study of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people by the LSE and the University of Bedfordshire commissioned by London Councils. It highlighted a separation between practices of care and the practicalities of asylum support, even when the children had a positive relationship with their social worker. Those who did not receive social work support through the asylum process said it amplified their sense of being alone, while others who benefited from corporate parenting felt held and understood. Among the report’s recommendations is much greater involvement of social workers as corporate parents in the asylum-seeking process.
Not only does Clause 22 exclude migrant children, but in its reference to nationality functions it would appear to exclude children who are entitled to British citizenship but have to claim it, as mentioned earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Can my noble friend explain why children and young people who have lived in the UK in care for most, if not all, of their lives and who are entitled to British citizenship should be covered by this exclusion, if that is indeed the case?
This group is the subject of Amendment 147, a probing amendment, which would require an authority discharging its corporate parenting responsibilities under Clause 21 to consider the right to British citizenship of looked-after children and young people and how to ensure that right is secured.
I am grateful to the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, PRCBC, of which I am a patron, and Amnesty International for their support on this matter. PRCBC provides legal assistance and representation to many children and young people to overcome formidable barriers to claiming their nationality rights. We are talking about children who may have been born in this country, who certainly have lived most of their lives here, but who have to register their right to citizenship with the Home Office under the British Nationality Act 1981. Awareness of this law remains low, including among social workers. The point of this amendment is in part simply to draw attention to the profound importance of the right to British citizenship for the identity, sense of belonging and confidence—in other words, well-being—of this group of children and young people.
PRCBC has witnessed young people devastated when they discover they are not automatically British citizens but have to register their entitlement, and some have even experienced mental breakdown as a result. In order to avoid this happening, the amendment also points to the practical need for action to improve the understanding and capacities of local authorities to ensure that this group of children and young people in their care claim their entitlement. Too many children enter care without the necessary action being taken so that nobody can now identify or obtain the evidence needed to prove that the child is a British citizen entitled to be registered as such.
The vulnerable persons team within the nationalities section of the Home Office, established under the last Government, supports local authorities to take formal steps to secure the citizenship rights of children in their care, and this is very welcome. However, as PRCBC continues to experience, too little is done too late by too many local authorities. They need to understand from the start the importance of British citizenship to the children in their care and act to ensure that vital evidence is identified and secured while it can be.
These two amendments underline the importance of the actions of local authorities and other bodies for the well-being of all children for whom they have corporate parental responsibility, regardless of immigration or nationality status.
In conclusion, returning to Amendment 152, while Clause 22 carves out a function rather than a group of children as such, the effect is to exclude a particularly vulnerable group of children and young people whose well-being is heavily dependent on immigration, asylum, and nationality functions. What this amendment comes down to is that we must put all children and their best interests first. I am sure the Government believe in this principle; therefore, I hope and trust that they will acknowledge that the effect of exclusion of any group of children from the corporate parenting duty because they are affected by immigration, asylum or nationality functions, offends this principle and will thus accept the amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendment 152 from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, to which I have put my name. I declare an interest as vice-president of the children’s charity, Barnardo’s.
Currently, nearly one in 10 children in care is an unaccompanied asylum seeker. While their immigration status remains uncertain they face significant disadvantages in accessing services. It is good that the Government recognise that extending corporate parenting duties to a range of public bodies has the potential to improve the agency support of children in and leaving care, yet they also decided specifically to exempt decisions relating to immigration, nationality and asylum. Barnardo’s believes that children who have fled persecution and arrive in this country seeking sanctuary must be seen as children first. They are victims who are not in control of their destiny. Amendment 152 from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, would end that exemption. I very much support it; I hope that the Government will too, and will show consideration and compassion to these sometimes traumatised children.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for their contributions in this group, which relates to corporate parenting and, in particular, to immigration functions. I particularly thank my noble friend Lady Lister for introducing her amendments.
Amendment 152 seeks to apply corporate parenting duties to immigration, asylum and nationality functions. As we discussed in the previous group, our new corporate parenting measures will place an important responsibility on each Secretary of State and relevant bodies to support and seek to provide opportunities for looked-after children and care leavers, which in turn will improve their long-term outcomes. This means that Secretaries of State, including the Home Secretary, and relevant public bodies are required to be alert to matters that might negatively affect the well-being of looked-after children and care leavers, regardless of their immigration status, when exercising any functions other than those relating to asylum, immigration, nationality or customs. To be clear, children and young people in the immigration system will absolutely benefit from the additional care and support that new corporate parents will provide. The exemption is to a set of functions, not to a set of children.
This Government recognise the importance of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the UK. As my noble friend identified, this is already reflected in Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009. Section 55 requires the Home Secretary to make arrangements for ensuring that immigration, asylum and nationality functions are discharged
“having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the United Kingdom”.
Statutory guidance linked to this sets out the key principles. This includes that the best interest of the child is a primary consideration when making decisions affecting children. Children should be consulted, and their wishes and feelings taken into account wherever practicable, when decisions affecting them are made. Children should have their applications dealt with in a way that minimises the uncertainty that they may experience. The guidance also emphasises the importance of interagency working.
My noble friend made the point about the requirement to speed up asylum decision-making processes and questioned whether this exclusion would mean that asylum decision-making for these children was not as quick as possible. Applying the duty to the asylum functions of the Home Office would not require it to decide asylum claims for young people in care as soon as possible on its own; that would not be the impact of applying that particular responsibility to this function. The Home Office is committed to ensuring that vulnerable claimants, such as children and care leavers, have their claims decided at the earliest opportunity. However, there are many factors, some beyond the control of the Home Office, that can delay and contribute to the length of time taken to process children’s asylum claims, such as age disputes and the availability of legal representation.
The Home Office works continuously to improve the speed of decision-making—I have to say that, under this Government, it has had some success in doing that—and reduce the number of outstanding claims for children. However, there will always be complex cases, and it is right that the Home Office takes the time to consider those carefully.
Also, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children looked after by local authorities are already subject to the general corporate parenting duties. They will be covered by the specific duties on the local authorities that care for them and by the broader duties this Bill will bring in.
The Government are reflecting on the requirement to support children in gaining certainty about their legal status, in particular in gaining citizenship, and taking further steps to consider looked-after children’s and care leavers’ interests as we reform and manage the immigration system, as set out in the White Paper Restoring Control Over the Immigration System, published on 12 May. That White Paper contained proposals to ensure that children who have been in the UK for some time and who discover, when they turn 18, that they do not have status are fully supported and able to regularise their status and settle. This will include a clear pathway for those looked-after children and care leavers. I hope that responds to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on the previous group. The Home Secretary will set out further details about how progress will be made on that objective.
Amendment 147 also deals with this issue and seeks to ensure that new corporate parents consider the right to British citizenship of looked after children and care leavers, and how that entitlement can be secured to avoid adverse effects on their well-being. Local authorities already follow a separate set of corporate parenting principles, as I have suggested, and are best placed to take steps to consider whether a young person in their care needs support to seek British citizenship.
I know from experience, and from having seen some of the practice, that considerable care is already being taken to ensure that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and other children subject to the immigration system in care are receiving from local authorities the care and attention that they specifically need because of their needs. In fact, I can remember, when I was chairing Sandwell Children’s Trust, being asked to help a social worker assistant who was trying to ensure that two of the children for whom we were responsible were able to get the passports they needed in time to be taken on holiday by the foster parents who were caring for them.
A lot of day-to-day work is going on in this area. As I have already suggested, all that work and support for those children is not exempted by this provision in the Bill; it is only with respect to the functions that I have already talked about. The White Paper that I touched on earlier also sets out the Government’s intent to consider measures to reduce the financial barriers to accessing British nationality for young adults who have lived here through their childhood. The previous Government already removed some fees in those circumstances, back in 2022.
That the Home Secretary is bringing forward proposals in this area I hope makes clear the Government’s commitment to ensuring that children, as we seek to regularise their status in this country, are getting the necessary support, and that it will be improved by this Government. Given the assurances I have provided, I hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment on this point.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for her response and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for making the case and reminding us that we are talking about children first. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for what was actually a very sympathetic response to what I said.
I absolutely take the point—I finished with this point—that we are taking about functions and not a group of children. I have not quite finished reading the new study that has just come out, but the trouble is that, in many cases, parts of corporate parenting functions involve asylum and immigration matters, so it is difficult to disentangle the function from the group. I will have to look more closely at what the Minister said, but I have to admit that I am not totally persuaded.
I still do not really understand why it is necessary to have this exclusion. I tabled this amendment on behalf of the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, in which there are a lot of children’s organisations. A lot of the people who are briefing on this Bill—Barnardo’s and many others—welcome the corporate parenting duty and then say, “We must not have this exclusion”. There seems to be a disconnect between their reading, interpretation and understanding of what this will mean and the Government’s. We may have to come back to that—I do not know—but I still do not really understand why it is felt necessary to have this exclusion, which is creating such alarm among children’s organisations.
On children who are entitled to claim British citizenship, I have been working on this issue for many years, pressing the previous Government and finally getting somewhere. That is not just because of me—it is primarily because of the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, which has been indefatigable in pushing on this, together with Amnesty. I welcome what is in the White Paper and look forward to getting more detail about what is meant. Certainly, after the way things were left under the previous Government, it is still difficult—it costs so much to put in that claim. I remember that when we discussed in this House the rules on who can be exempted from having to pay, we were very unhappy about them. It would be excellent if the Government were taking another look at that. The fact is that there are too many children—and my noble friend talked about them after the age of 18. Ideally, local authorities would be more aware of this and would make sure that the claim was made before young people reached the age of 18.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 187 in my name, and I am supportive of others in this group, particularly those in the names of my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to promote and support a mixed model of breakfast provision, already mentioned by my noble friend, which would better meet the Government’s objectives, in the view of Magic Breakfast, which has years of experience of school breakfast provision, and to which I am grateful for its support.
I have long been a supporter of free school breakfasts, particularly for children living in poverty, for whom the provision of breakfast can make so much difference to their well-being and their ability to benefit from their schooling. I was therefore delighted that the Government had included them for primary school children in the bill. However, I am persuaded by Magic Breakfast’s argument in favour of a more flexible approach that would embrace other forms of provision as well as breakfast clubs—“breakfast clubs plus”, if you like. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state that the duty it places on schools is a minimum. The official guidance for the early adopter scheme makes it clear that schools are encouraged to go beyond the minimum standards. This amendment would signal that more clearly and would support schools in going beyond the minimum.
Magic Breakfast very much supports the breakfast club model as a minimum standard, but suggests that, because its inflexibility means that it can limit access to food in ways we already heard about, it is not the best model on its own for tackling hunger and child poverty, which I know the Secretary of State cares passionately about. The two other models that could play a valuable role are classroom-based and nurture-group provision. Classroom provision is delivered within the main learning environment, either straight before the start of the school day or as part of a soft start to the day. The latter can support the development of soft skills and ensure that all pupils are adequately fed and ready to start learning.
Nurture groups are commonly used in both mainstream and specialist settings to provide a small-group environment, particularly for pupils with social, emotional or behavioural difficulties. Many Magic Breakfast partner schools deliver such provision in a variety of ways, enabling them to take a more person-centred approach to the needs of pupils. The amendment will support both these models but would leave it open to the Secretary of State to promote other models that go beyond the delivery of food.
Magic Breakfast sums up the amendment as encouraging a “place-based approach” to breakfast policy-making. It believes that such an approach has been a key driver behind the scale of take-up of breakfasts in its partner schools. On average, this is 375% higher than among non-Magic Breakfast schools. It suggests that the reason is that alternative models do not require access to childcare or necessarily being at school early. Not every pupil at risk of hunger is able to access before-school provision due to factors beyond their, and often their parents’, control.
This is particularly true of those with SEND, an issue that was raised a number of times in the Commons and by my noble friend Lord Watson. A mixed model is better able to respond to difficulties that SEND pupils might have with transport, specialist medication and eating needs and large-group provision. It can offer the kind of pupil-centred provision that is needed. It is no accident that only 16% of special schools partnered with Magic Breakfast operate a breakfast club-only model. I am sure many noble Lords have received the open letter signed by leading charities on this matter.
According to Magic Breakfast, the breakfast club model is particularly expensive. In 2021, analysis by the Education Endowment Foundation found mixed models make more efficient use of staffing and that, on average, a mixed model approach was up to 75% cheaper than a pure breakfast club model. I would have thought that that would be music to the ears of the Government.
In conclusion, the Government’s laudable objectives with regard to education, hunger and child poverty would be better met by adopting the mixed-model approach put forward in this amendment. If my noble friend the Minister does not feel able to accept this, or an alternative, amendment, I would urge her in her response to first explicitly recognise the case for schools delivering school breakfast in a way that has regard for the varied needs of their pupils and that is focused on alleviating hunger and, secondly, to commit to encouraging mixed models of provision in national guidance.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I would like to say a few words about my amendment, which is about a slightly different area but attached to the same part of the Bill.
School activity has taken rather a pounding of late. If you link sport, arts, music, culture, youth clubs and so on only to a school, so they happen only in a school setting, they stop when school stops. If you make it just about education—sport is a very good example of this—dropout ages are 16, 18 and 21, because that is when you leave your educational institution. I hope that here we would have an opportunity to get the voluntary sector back talking to and helping young people.
On the amendments I tabled, subsection (2A) in Amendment 185 is at least as important, because it means providing voluntary activity in schools so they can identify with and get in contact with these groups outside. The groups outside want to make contact. Their survival and the survival of their activity depends on getting new people in, and they are giving something positive back. Anybody who has had any experience with anything from an am-dram group to a rugby team knows there is a social network that is interdependent and builds up a sense of community and purpose, and helps that group and those people in it, effectively providing almost a family group at times. It is a place where you can find jobs, structure, help, support and purpose; it is all there.
Apart from a diatribe that amateur sport will save the world, it is a fact that we are going to very solid, well-established ground here. I do not think anybody is going to disagree that these things are beneficial. We talk about the health aspect and the need for a good diet, but it is possible to put on weight on healthy food if you do not move. Let us look at how we can expand education not just through the education establishment. We should look to people who are doing positive things on a voluntary basis and helping you get out there.
Just to cast an eye on the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that we are about to discuss, this is another good amendment. I know the noble Lord well, and I have no doubt that he will have more to say on it. He refers to me as his “friend in sport”, and I am glad to carry on that one. Basically, if we do not encourage these formal lines back into our education system—unfortunately we have broken, or at least damaged, the informal ones—we are going to lose this contact with somewhere where you go on to do something positive. I look forward to the Minister’s answer, and to her answer on the amendments led by my noble friend Lady Walmsley.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
What we have announced as part of the spending review settlement is separate to the funding for the national rollout, about which we will bring forward information.
On Amendment 505B tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, early adopters are key to ensuring that we get implementation right before national rollout. This learning will help develop our statutory guidance. More information will be made available, including on the exemptions process, to Parliament and in the public domain.
On that exemptions power, in relation to Amendments 186B and 186C, I understand that there may be extreme and, critically, individual circumstances that could prevent individual schools meeting their duties to provide breakfast clubs. The exemption power is designed to address this on a case-by-case basis. That is why schools would be expected to apply and to be able to demonstrate their exemption eligibility under one of the criteria set out in the legislation. Our expectation is that any school seeking an exemption will actively engage with its school community, the local authority and the department to ensure that it has done all it can to meet its breakfast club duty.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt. It may be me—I may have missed it, as it getting to the end of the week—but I am not sure that my noble friend responded to Amendment 187 with the Government’s position on the mixed models. I know she talked a lot about physical activity and so forth. If she did say, can she repeat it? There is quite a lot that she is having to cram together into different slots, and I do not think there was anything explicit about the mixed model promoted by Amendment 187.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The point I made was that I and the Government disagree with my noble friend that there should be a sort of all-flowers-blooming approach to breakfast clubs. I set out the reason why the Government believe there should be a basic set of conditions and criteria for breakfast clubs. Of course, it is completely possible that schools may well then decide to put on other provision alongside the basic provision laid out in the criteria set out for breakfast clubs in legislation—this is one of the things that we will look at in the early adopters scheme—but the Government are not favouring the idea that there would be a variety of different routes. That is because of the points I made about this being about the provision not just of food but of the club and of the 30 minutes of childcare. Those things are quite an important basis of what is being delivered through the breakfast club programme.
Lord Bird (CB)
Amendment 163 in my name would place a duty on the Secretary of State to set binding child poverty reduction targets and report on them annually to Parliament. This amendment will hold the Government to their promise to reduce child poverty and enable them to measure their progress. This amendment would secure long-term focus on tackling child poverty which transcends changes of government.
I have listened to the former discussion and I am of the opinion that a lot of government and parliamentary time goes into chasing the horse once the horse has bolted. That is one of the big problems we have. We are talking about food and the fact that our children do not get fed properly; the poverty of knowledge, experience and need means that there are many millions of children in this country who have inherited poverty and, because they inherited poverty, they have a particular attitude towards food. I myself came from the Tizer-swilling, ice cream, Kit-Kat, Twix generation that took all those sorts of things, largely because that was what was on offer. I was culturally educated and socially created in that tradition.
I would like to see the Government have targets on reducing poverty, and I would like to have a debate on how we reduce it. I am not saying that I stand against the idea of giving children food—I welcome it. We welcomed it in the Big Issue and we celebrated the occasions when people like Marcus Rashford rushed forward and said, “Let’s have more food and free school meals for children”. I am a great believer in that. But the point is, when are we going to move beyond always responding once the horse has bolted? When are we going to move to a situation where we prevent children needing this?
One of the things that we could be doing is setting targets. We would be helping the Government, and ourselves, to look at all the things we can do to get rid of poverty, prevent poverty and cure people of poverty. I do not think that being well fed at school will necessarily make enormous changes to the trajectory of your life if you have been an inheritor of poverty. That is one of the major problems that we have. We have this situation where we are always coming up with bright and clever pilots, programmes and initiatives. Governments spend an enormous amount of time doing that.
I would love a situation where we try to say goodbye to poverty, and that will mean moving beyond these emergencies. I listen to the Government and the debates in society and I feel, in a way, that they are not much different from refugeeism. They are not much different from the internal refugees who exist in Britain: the people in the poorest situations who have inherited poverty. What we are doing is trying to make poverty a little bit more comfortable.
I am calling for the Government to have targets so that we can measure the effects of their efforts and advise and help them to move beyond this emergency-ism into prevention and cure-ism. Those are the kinds of areas I am interested in and why I tabled Amendment 163.
Will the Government commit to targets to reduce child poverty? Will the child poverty strategy include targets? I beg to move.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak in support of Amendment 163, to which I have added my name. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for tabling it.
A recent article in the academic journal Social Policy & Administration on the harm done to children by the benefit cap and the two-child limit, demonstrated the implications of poverty for children’s well-being. The authors concluded that their evidence provides
“a stark illustration of the multiple and severe harms”,
including social and emotional harms,
“caused by poverty, and … the benefit cap and the two-child limit”.
Similarly, other academic research points to the “hidden injuries” and “degradations” suffered particularly by families in deep poverty. The Children’s Society’s The Good Childhood Report makes clear the damage poverty does to children’s well-being. New research from the Child Poverty Action Group, of which I am honorary president, highlights the ways in which lack of money can prevent secondary school children attending school and limits their time at school.
The establishment of the child poverty task force and the commitment to an ambitious child poverty strategy, which is the kind of thing the noble Lord is asking for, is thus very welcome. In a report I wrote recently for Compass, I supported the case made by End Child Poverty and many others for legally binding targets with clear milestones, pointing to the experience of the last Labour Government, when targets helped to galvanise action on child poverty, leading to a reduction of 600,000 or six percentage points. That experience underlined the importance of targets to the effectiveness of the emergent strategy.
CPAG conducted interviews with 40 practitioners with a range of expertise relating to child poverty. They were unanimous in their view that an effective strategy must set clear targets. CPAG argued that such targets for the short, medium and long term need to be “aspirational yet achievable”, learning from other countries.
The practitioners also make the case for a target relating to the depth of poverty, such as reducing average or median poverty depth. This, they suggest,
“will spur the strategy to increase incomes for all children in poverty and help to demonstrate progress even for children who remain in poverty”.
It might be “making poverty more comfortable”, to quote the noble Lord—like him, I would like to see the end of poverty—but in the short term, for those who are really pushed deep into poverty, making it slightly more comfortable is, perhaps, no bad thing. It would also help to counter the argument sometimes used against targets: that they encourage a “poverty plus a pound” mentality that thinks the job is done once enough people are pulled just across the poverty line. Incidentally, the same could be said of a parallel duty to measure children’s well-being, which is the subject of a later amendment.
In its latest poverty report, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation observed that the average person in poverty has an income 28% below the poverty line, up from 23% in the mid-1990s. Those living in very deep poverty have an average income 57% below the poverty line—an increase in the gap of nearly two-thirds over the past 25 years. Families have been pushed deeper and deeper into poverty, largely due to the huge cuts in social security made by the Conservative Governments.
Lord Storey (LD)
I have to be careful here with what I say. When are you are in Committee, you are dealing with dozens of amendments, and you get handed briefs to do that. Initially, I read that to be the way the noble Baroness said it. But when I read it again, I thought, “This does not make sense. Could it be the other way round?” I slightly inwardly panicked and thought, “I am not going to mislead the Committee and say something that is not correct”. I am going to put that down and say that my common sense tells me that if you are doing something, you need to know where you are going on that journey. You need to be able to understand that a target is set and ask, “Have I reached that target or not?” The best example of that is—
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I am so sorry; this is perhaps just to put the noble Lord out of his misery. I remind noble Lords that under the last Labour Government, there were targets. They were made legally binding in the 2010 Act, but the targets were already there, and child poverty fell. Under the subsequent Governments, child poverty started to rise again, and it has risen. I am not saying it is just because of the targets, but the targets certainly helped to galvanise civil society, local authorities and central government. That is why the noble Lord’s gut feeling is absolutely right.
Lord Storey (LD)
It is wonderful to be surrounded by so many supportive people, including someone in the Official Opposition, who has just told me it should be the other way round.
What I originally said should have been the other way round. You have only to look at the NHS to see that: when we had clear targets in the NHS, we could see the progress that was being made or not being made. As soon as we did away with targets, we did not know how successful or unsuccessful we were. I support this amendment because it says, “If we are going to deal with child poverty, we need to say what we want to achieve and the targets we want to set”, and we can monitor them and know whether we are successful or unsuccessful. I apologise for misleading the Committee.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I begin by stressing that reducing child poverty is a goal that we clearly share across the House, and tackling the challenge of child poverty must be a priority for every Government. This Government have been very clear on that point.
Understandably, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, reflects his desire to drive forward real progress on this issue, and he brings extraordinary experience from his own life. My remarks and caution about the noble Lord’s amendments are in the spirit of honesty and respect to the noble Lord and in no way diminish the aims of his amendment but raise, I hope, reasonable questions about the approach.
As the noble Lord said—I have never heard the phrase used like this before, but I thought the concept of inherited poverty was very helpful—we know that child poverty stems from a number of different interconnected factors, including employment patterns, housing costs, structure of families, educational opportunities and regional economic conditions. My overriding concern is that having binding central targets risks oversimplifying this very complex challenge and could overlook local interventions that genuinely improve children’s lives. The challenges and underlying causes of a child living in poverty in Hackney or in Jaywick are significantly different, despite them being only about 50 miles apart. In fact, I would argue that, for a child growing up in poverty, the differences between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare, which are on each other’s doorstep, are also very great.
We have seen repeatedly how targets can distort behaviour and priorities. When governments and local authorities face binding targets, there is a risk that they are driven to pursue interventions that improve statistics rather than outcomes. This can lead to short-term fixes that artificially move families just above the poverty threshold without addressing the underlying causes; somewhere back to the empty stable and bolted horse that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, referred to. However, I absolutely recognise the reality behind the call that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made to make particularly deep poverty more comfortable—a slightly curious concept, but I think we all understand exactly what she means.
Child poverty, as noble Lords know, manifests differently across England—from rural communities that face challenges with transport and access to employment, to urban areas grappling with housing costs and concentrated deprivation. What works in Manchester would be inappropriate for rural Devon, and I would argue that local authorities, combined authorities and community organisations are perhaps often better placed to understand and respond to their specific poverty challenges than central government.
Setting binding targets risks creating a hierarchy of government priorities which may not reflect emerging needs or, indeed, changing subjects. Such targets risk us focusing on specific areas rather than the underlying causes of child poverty. So again, I do not agree with the approach set out in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, but I do agree with his ambition; and I also agree with the call of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, for action as well as words.
As I said in opening, I know that the Government are very focused on reducing child poverty, and I look forward to the Minister’s remarks.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
Before the noble Baroness sits down, may I just ask her why she thinks that all the charities working in the field and with local authorities, as well as academics, are calling for legally binding targets, if they would have the effect she says and would not help to address the systemic causes of poverty?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Obviously, I respect their opinions, but there is plenty of evidence—and the noble Baroness will know this in other contexts, not necessarily about child poverty—where targets have distorted behaviour, not always delivering on the aspiration of those who recommended them at the time.
Before I sit down, I would like to put on record a clarification about my closing remarks earlier on the first group that we debated today. I remain very concerned about the lack of a comprehensive and up-to-date dataset and analysis of the financial position of independent providers won from the Government, but I was wrong to say, in the earlier debate on Tuesday evening, that the figure the Minister quoted regarding the profits of the independent children’s home sector was for the whole sector. When I reread Hansard, possibly for the third time, it was clear that she had stated that it was for the largest 20 providers. In fact, the figure was for the 19 largest providers, but none the less I apologise to the Committee, to the Minister and to officials.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for the clarification at the end of her comments.
Amendment 163 has enabled us to have a very good debate about the importance of making progress on child poverty. I agree fully with the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and my noble friend Lady Lister for ambition on reducing child poverty. The success of the last Labour Government in tackling child poverty is the legacy that we are aiming to build on in this one. We want to see an enduring reduction in child poverty over this Parliament as part of a long-term, 10-year strategy for lasting change. The child poverty strategy, which we will publish in the autumn, will set out the Government’s strong commitment to this and, importantly, how we plan to achieve this reduction. The strategy will tackle overall child poverty as well as going beyond that to focus on the children in the deepest poverty, lacking essentials and what is needed to give every child the best start in life.
I very strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that this is a multifaceted problem. Several noble Lords have identified particular issues that are likely to benefit children. I agree that education, and particularly recognition of the need for education for disadvantaged children, which is also a key theme for this Government, is an important part of that, but there are in fact a complex and interrelated range of issues that lead to child poverty and that can help to alleviate it.
We have already started to take substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through the spending review 2025. This includes: an expansion of free school meals, which will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the Parliament; establishing a long-term crisis and resilience fund, supported by £1 billion a year; investing in local family support services; and extending the £3 bus fare cap. We have also announced the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation and £13.2 billion across the Parliament for the warm homes plan.
Our commitments at the 2025 spending review come on top of the existing action we are taking, which includes expanding free breakfast clubs, as we talked about today; capping the number of branded school uniform items that children are expected to wear, which I think we will talk about on Monday; increasing the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes; and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions. The Child Poverty Taskforce will continue to explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term action across government to reduce child poverty. The strategy will look at levers across four key themes: increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience and better local support, especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans under way across government and work under way in devolved Governments.
We agree that timely reporting is important in monitoring progress. The Government already have a statutory duty to publish poverty statistics annually. In addition, in the autumn we will set out the monitoring and evaluation arrangements we will put in place for our strategy for this year and future years, so that the progress we make is transparent for all. I very much take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, made about accountability, both to this House and more broadly, for making progress on the strategy, but our view is that statutory targets for child poverty would not in themselves drive reductions in poverty. They can be reversed, and have been in the past, so do not serve as an effective means of binding government to a specific course of action. As my noble friend referenced—although only to say that she did not agree with it—they also risk adversely narrowing the focus of effort to moving the children closest to the poverty line over it, rather than the direct and comprehensive approach that we will take to helping children in relative and deep poverty across the United Kingdom.
I cannot help but add that noble Lords have come up with all sorts of reasons as to why things might have changed in 2010, but my view is that the defining issue in whether children get out of poverty is not whether targets are set but the nature of the Government at the time. The last Labour Government saw reductions in child poverty; this Labour Government are committed to achieving that as well. I hope that provides assurance to noble Lords.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I have a last point to make. I am obviously disappointed by my noble friend’s response on targets, but she talked about monitoring and accountability. One of the really good things about the way the Child Poverty Taskforce has gone about its work has been the way it has engaged with—and listened to—both parents and children with experience of poverty. One recommendation made by a lot of people in the sector is that this engagement with those who have experience of poverty should continue as part of the monitoring and accountability mechanism. I just wanted to throw that into the pot.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for recognising the enormously broad way in which the Child Poverty Taskforce has undertaken its work, under the leadership of my right honourable friends the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. It has been about looking at the whole breadth of actions that this Government can take, and engaging with those who have the most experience of what it means to be poor, as well as others who represent them. I hope and believe that broad approach and the commitment of this Labour Government will make the real impact to children that we all seek.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, if the noble Lord brings his amendment back, will he consider adding a target on deep poverty? A lot of what he has said so eloquently has been about people who have been pushed, by a range of policies, into deep poverty.
Lord Bird (CB)
I have never heard of the concept of deep poverty. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said that poverty is different if you are in Weston-super-Mare or in Bristol. I was privileged to be banged up with people from the countryside, from the little cities and the big cities. I met all of them. We had a uniformity of thinking, which was so self-destructive. There is uniformity. There is a philosophy of poverty. Until we break through that, we are not going anywhere. The idea of relative poverty is ridiculous.
Unfortunately, we have increasing poverty because we have not attacked the inheritance of poverty. So many people break out of poverty because the parents choose not to simulate or duplicate what has happened before. My wife’s family come from poverty in India. They said goodbye to poverty. All the children have gone through college, done the levels and been to university. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Children’s Rights
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask His Majesty’s Government what role children’s rights will play in their plans to improve children’s wellbeing and opportunities.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, children are at the heart of this Government’s ambitions. We will deliver lasting change for all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. From April 2025, we are nearly doubling investment in preventive services, with over £500 million to deliver family help and child protection reforms. Children should remain with their families, and where they cannot, we will support more children to live with kinship carers or in fostering families, helping to ensure their rights to loving families.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the renewed commitment to child-centred government, although I am disappointed that my noble friend said nothing about children’s rights as such. In view of UNICEF UK’s statement that children’s rights should be central to plans to improve children’s well-being and opportunities and of the many criticisms made of the previous Government’s record by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, can my noble friend say what steps are now being taken to implement that committee’s recommendations to better protect and promote children’s rights and, in particular, its call for mandatory child rights impact assessments to improve policy-making and legislation relevant to children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that we must consider children’s rights in all our policy-making, and the Government recognise the importance of considering children’s rights in that way. That is why, in the department, we are continuing to encourage policymakers across government to carry out children’s rights impact assessments when they are making policy changes and, with respect to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we have conducted child’s rights impact assessments where children are directly impacted by the policies, or where there are particular groups of children and young people more likely to be affected than others, and we will publish those child’s rights impact assessments.
Education: Early Years Attainment Gap
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
We have increased the rates this year, but we will be looking at the implications of national insurance contributions for the early years sector.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, given the importance of childcare to early years education and development, would our child-centred Government consider as part of their early years strategy, referred to by my noble friend, the extension of free childcare to children whose parents are not working at least 16 hours a week? At present, children from the lowest-income families, who are likely to benefit most, are excluded from free childcare.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point. On the entitlements, we are delivering the programme and the plans set out by the previous Government, but there are also provisions for some parents with children with particular needs, or where they are on particular benefits, to receive childcare provision. Notwithstanding the pressures on the public purse, we will want to think in the early years strategy about how we can extend the support of childcare to more families when we are able to.
Government’s Childcare Expansion
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend eloquently outlines the enormous difference that can be made to a child’s start in life by the security and development that they can get from any early years worker. She is absolutely right that this is a job that men do extremely well and should be encouraged into doing. For some children who have not had the benefit of having those sorts of role models in their family lives, they will probably be fundamentally important for their success later on in life.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, one of the last Labour Government’s great achievements was the introduction of the Sure Start scheme, but, as my noble friend will know, many Sure Start centres have been closed. I am often asked what our Government’s position is on Sure Start. Could my noble friend perhaps say something about it?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
One of the very last contributions that I made in the House of Commons before I came face to face with the electorate in Redditch was to suggest that I feared that a future Conservative Government might dismantle our Sure Start programme. I was jeered at the time, yet sadly I was right. In recent years we have seen, through some of the longitudinal analysis that was done on Sure Start, the impact that it had on children’s lives. I am afraid I cannot at this time undertake to reinstate the scale and significance of the last Labour Government’s Sure Start scheme, but I can say that recognising the way in which all those elements work in a child’s life—childcare, early years, health and family support—will be a very important way that, across this Government, we think about our future plans to support children to have the very best start in life.
King’s Speech
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friends to their important new ministerial roles, and our Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. A fundamental barrier, as recognised, is poverty, especially child poverty. That is closely linked to women’s poverty and is part of the intersecting inequalities which, as the Fairness Foundation argues convincingly, will if untackled prevent the achievement of the Government’s missions generally. It is clear from a growing body of research that progress on education and health requires progress on child poverty, the risk and depth of which grew to shocking levels under the previous Government. I thus applaud the promise of free breakfast clubs in primary schools and the regulation of school uniforms in the wonderfully titled children’s well-being Bill, although I hope we can in time look also to the extension of free school meals.
The manifesto commitment to an ambitious child poverty strategy is crucial to the achievement of the opportunity and other missions. The swift establishment of a child poverty task force and a new child poverty unit was music to my ears. The task force will rightly work with a range of stakeholders, which I hope will include the voices of those experiencing poverty. We can learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the Scottish and Welsh strategies, including the need for a clear action plan with targets. The targets set by the previous Labour Government, subsequently scrapped, helped to galvanise action at national and local levels. I also emphasise the need for the strategy to include children in migrant families, highlighted by the recent joint inquiry of the APPGs on poverty and migration into the effects on poverty of immigration, asylum and refugee policies, in which I was involved. A cross-government strategy will of course include the early years and good work, but repair of the social security system, badly damaged since 2010, has to be a central plank, as argued by charities in the field that see the impact of social security cuts on children and their families.
The opportunities mission plan states that it will:
“Make security the foundation of opportunity”.
It is therefore puzzling that it makes no mention of social security, the primary purpose of which is to guarantee financial security through social means. Shredded by post-2010 Governments, it no longer fulfils that purpose, so now is the time to put the security back into social security, to provide the foundation for opportunity. As the manifesto states:
“Delivering opportunities for all means that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity”.
That includes social security recipients and the language used when talking about them. Please let there be no talk of handouts. Social security is a human right.
Inevitably it will take time to repair the damage done but, following the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and many others, I urge the immediate abolition of the two-child limit, which currently affects 1.6 million children, otherwise I am afraid we will be developing a child poverty strategy with one hand tied behind our back. Together with the benefit cap, which also needs reviewing, it most hurts larger families, including some minority-ethnic families.
The implications for the opportunities mission of retaining the limit were brought out in a recent study by the CPAG—of which I am honorary president—the Church of England and others. Here is an example: a lone parent with three children told how her 12 year-old son had been off school for over one and a half weeks because she could not afford to replace his ripped school shoes, and the school threatened isolation all day if he wore black trainers. She said:
“My son is embarrassed for not being able to go to school and wasn’t even able to tell his friends why”.
Can we really not find the necessary money and investment in children? As Gordon Brown points out, we need to factor in the cost of not acting—for instance, in terms of children taken into care and the NHS.
Alongside the cuts directed at children are years of freezes and real-value cuts in benefit rates that have left them totally inadequate to meet basic needs, as evidence to the recent Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into benefit levels demonstrated. I hope the Government will conduct the kind of review called for by its report. I hope they will also heed its recommendation to extend the local authority household support fund. Even if it is a sticking plaster, filling some of the gaping holes in the social security system, it is a vital local lifeline. Due to expire in September, it would leave only the discretionary welfare assistance that replaced the Social Fund that many local authorities no longer provide. A temporary extension would provide stability, prevent even greater reliance on food banks and allow for consultation on a longer-term statutory local crisis support scheme.
In conclusion, to cite Gordon Brown again,
“we need a clear commitment from the current government to rebuild a social security system that will genuinely protect people”.
That was directed to the last Government, but I hope it will now fall on the more sympathetic ears of a Government who promise security and demolition of the barriers to opportunity, including the overwhelming barrier of child poverty.