Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Longfield Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a huge pleasure to take part in this important debate, and I draw attention to my interests in the register. All of us in this Chamber want the children of our country to succeed, but I think we also know that many will not do so without extra help. If we are in any doubt about that, we should look at what has happened in recent years since and during the pandemic, when it was revealed that systems consistently failed vulnerable children. I have been arguing for decades that we need to have bold reform from the top to the bottom, and we need to close those gaps in systems that have leaned away and continue to lean away from vulnerable children, and put those children at the very centre of our systems, protecting them from harm and boosting their life chances.

This Bill is a commitment and an opportunity to do just that. The measures to improve our safeguarding and education systems are very welcome. I really welcome the conversations we have already started in this Chamber today about the importance of putting children and children’s outcomes at the centre of these debates—not the structures or the systems, which are all means to an end that we need to make work. It has to be about the children’s outcomes.

A good education, of course, is a crucial foundation for all children, but we know that hundreds of thousands of children are missing school, either through poor attendance or because they are being home-schooled through elective home education. I have heard thousands of parents telling me that they feel they and their children are pushed out and ignored by the system. They are left with no other option than to home-educate, despite often not feeling that they are well equipped to do so. We also know that there are children who have been taken out of school deliberately so that the harms they are coming to are not seen. There are children who are not in school and go off the radar, falling into the hands of those who want to groom and exploit them, so I strongly welcome the new register of children in schools and the new powers for local authorities.

I also welcome measures in the Bill that support councils to provide better, improved early support for families and to ensure that public agencies work together better to protect and support children. I know that Members of this House have been talking about that for a long time. With that, early intervention and support for families are very important too. The single unique identifier for children gives an opportunity to see that through. We need to see better investment in early intervention and prevention. That is also critical as part of these reforms.

While the ambitions of the Bill are absolutely clear, there will be things that we all want to discuss and sections we want to strengthen, as we have already heard today. The things that I am keen to talk more about include a greater focus on the early years that would strengthen and drive a move to prevention. The Government’s commitment to universal breakfast clubs is essential and very welcome, but let us capitalise on it and make sure that food in those breakfast clubs is nourishing and healthy, which is especially important given the worsening obesity crisis.

Similarly, I welcome measures to require local authorities to offer family group decision-making. I think we could sharpen up on that and particularly look at increasing the chances of reducing the number of children going into care in this way. I also support calls for the Bill to include measures of well-being to provide a strong evidence base for current and future policies.

Finally, as Children’s Commissioner I called for the removal of reasonable chastisement as a defence for physical punishment, and I continue to support that. The change has happened in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and the world has not fallen in, so it is probably time we caught up. Most of our children are happy and have opportunities to thrive in their childhoods, but a significant number are not. We must be ambitious for those children too. This vital Bill gives us a welcome opportunity to do exactly that.