Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, here we go in Committee and here we have had, probably, our first Second Reading speech from a colleague. I will not make a Second Reading speech; I will address this amendment, which I think is unnecessary. We have a perfectly sensible, comprehensive description of what this Bill seeks to do. We do not need another list in the Bill.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity that the purpose clause from my noble friend Lady Barran has given us to range far more freely than the tightly timed Second Reading allowed. I could only comment on what was in the Bill and pay scant attention to what I sensed was lacking. Part 1, and therefore the first half of the purpose clause, is where my sights are set in this Bill: improving the safety and well-being of children and improving the regulation of children’s homes, fostering agencies and other settings where looked-after children are accommodated. We heard from my noble friend about Professor Eileen Munro’s letter to the Times yesterday. She robustly supports the expansion of early help. It is in the provision of this where the Bill needs strengthening and greater specificity: for example, about the role of family hubs, which are not even mentioned.

A complex system of professionals and safeguarding arrangements is being restructured and key processes changed or removed, without it being clear what functions they are already performing or their place in the bigger picture. I was on the design group of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care—I mentioned that at Second Reading—and my most detailed offline discussions with the review team were on this restructuring, which I can see might be perceived to be finicky and potentially unnecessary. I am hearing concerns from directors of children’s services, and now from Professor Munro, that these reforms could weaken child protection, at a time when we are trying to batten down the hatches with, for example, the single unique identifier. As I will keep saying during Committee, I am concerned, as I was during the independent care review, that we are trying to do by process what we should be doing through relationships between professionals.

Does the Minister agree with the Department for Education spokeswoman, also quoted in the Times, who said that Munro’s criticisms

“demonstrate a lack of understanding of the proposed reforms, which have been widely supported and rebalance the system away from crisis intervention and towards earlier help”?

In other words, does she think that this eminent professor has not grasped her Government’s plans? Can she name current directors of children’s services who are enthusiastic about this restructure?

Child protection is the business of everyone who is involved with families and children, hence my amendments later in the Bill for family hubs to be included in safe- guarding arrangements. Of course, not all local authorities have family hubs yet, but an audit of the family hubs network carried out for Nesta earlier this year found 973 family hub networks in 133 out of 151 upper-tier councils, so the vast majority now have family hubs.

I and other Members in this Committee, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Longfield —whom I welcome somewhat belatedly, but no less warmly—have been urging all Governments to commit wholesale to family hub rollout across the country. Their propagation is unfinished business from both the founding of the welfare state and the full implementation of paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989, as I have said many times before. Hence I support the proposed new clause from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which would require local authorities to provide family support.

Health, education, social work and other arms of the state all have to pick up the pieces when families falter. The concept of family support needs presence in a community, so that parents in danger of splitting up have somewhere to turn; ex-partners going through a separation that is beginning to look messy can get early intervention in the form of mediation, after careful triage; and parents losing control of their teenagers can get support before they get drawn into gangs. The support that families need in myriad ways is co-ordinated and accessed through family hubs and their network of buildings and organisations, through a respectful, relational approach.

Of course, there is variability, and only 75 local authorities’ hub networks are funded. They are also tightly managed by the Department for Education’s family hubs and Start for Life programme. Since 2007, I have been working with Dr Callan to implement a hallmark of the family hubs network: its responsiveness to local needs. Many local authorities have a great track record in opening successful family hubs; they have told the family hubs network that they have had to slow down the rollout of services to older children, so that they could dot the i’s and cross the t’s required by the Start for Life programme.

I am a firm believer that family support has to start in maternity, and ideally earlier. That early intervention is far more easily achieved when local family support professionals have built relationships with parents, carers and children from the earliest days. I have amendments later in the Bill that would ensure that parents know where to get that help and support in their local area, by requiring local authorities to publish a Start for Life offer. That support should continue when a mother has, tragically, had a newborn, or often older children, removed from her care. Case files from the family courts show that history repeats itself and that judges can take as many as 14 or 15 children away from the same mother. Our care for the mother should not end when a child is safe, given the likelihood that the safety of future children will also have to be secured.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat my Second Reading speech. I draw attention to my interests on the register, particularly the fact that I am chair of a multi-academy trust.

Regarding subsection (1)(a) of this proposed new “Purpose” clause, the Long Title states that it is to make

“provision about the safeguarding and welfare of children”.

Nothing that we could do to further that endeavour could be greater than to restrict access to social media to those aged over 16. That is why I have tabled Amendment 177 to that effect. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for whom I have a huge amount of respect, said, this is so central to the overriding purpose of the Bill that I will take a few moments to elaborate.

I think we all know naturally that social media is very harmful to our children, but there is now an overwhelming body of evidence to support this. I recommend that anybody who has not done so reads the excellent book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. We want our children to be brought up confident, able to engage in deep thought, reflective and able to concentrate, to exercise judgment, to see the other side’s point of view, to be compassionate et cetera. We also want them to get a good night’s sleep. Smartphones and social media set up exactly the opposite behaviours.

In the 2022 PISA assessment, our children were in the bottom 10 of 31 countries in areas such as curiosity, perseverance, emotional control, stress resistance or grit, empathy and co-operation. There is now a strong body of clinical evidence on the harm that excessive use of smartphones and social media is doing to our children’s brains and eyesight.

Adolescence is a period of life in which our sense of self undergoes a profound transition. As teenagers become more conscious of how others see them, they often experience increased self-consciousness and self-criticism. Social media and the algorithms attached to them serve only to amplify this.

We also know that the adolescent brain is particularly susceptible to addictive behaviour. Constant exposure to fast-paced, highly stimulating content can condition the brain to expect frequent, rapid rewards, making it harder to sustain focus and concentrate. Numerous studies have shown the causal link between screens and the use of social media and sleep and depression.

A recent UCL study corroborated the link between social media and eating disorders and found that young people with eating disorders are more likely to be shown harmful content by social media algorithms. Samaritans research has shown that young people frequently see self-harm and suicide content across all social media sites, some of which display particularly graphic and triggering content, and almost three-quarters of teenage girls think that social media creates more pressure for them to look a certain way. Nearly one in five people arrested for terrorism-related offences in the past year was a child under 18. The Metropolitan Police has attributed this rise to social media, saying:

“You have the combination of the overt social media and then closed messaging apps”.


Social media has significantly expanded the reach of criminal drug networks, particularly among teenagers and young adults. Numerous studies in the UK have shown that gangs view social media platforms as essential tools for drug trafficking and gang recruitment. Parentkind tells us that more than 90% of parents think that social media is harmful to children and that more than 80% of parents feel that the age limit of 13 for signing up is too low. Australia has raised the limit to 16, Ireland is considering doing so and the EU is now considering similar measures. Bill Gates has described what Australia is doing as “a smart thing”, and we know that many people who work in the tech industry severely restrict their children’s use of social media and smartphones and often send their children to very screen-light schools.

Teaching unions have strongly pointed out the dangers of social media. The president of ASCL has said:

“It leaves a trail of harm—safeguarding concerns, fractured friendships, bullying, anxiety, and the spread of extremist ideologies. And increasingly, it is being weaponised against schools and teachers, with disgruntled parents using it as a platform to target staff”.


The general secretary of the NEU has said:

“We have to view the online world, social media and mobile phones in the same prism as we view the tobacco companies. These are harmful to our young people and they need regulating”.


The general secretary of NASUWT has described mobile phones as “lethal weapons”. Why should we let the consequences of this fall on our hard-working teachers, who have enough to do as it is?

The movement in support of the thinking behind my amendment is growing rapidly. We now have Health Professionals for Safer Screens, Smartphone Free Childhood, the Safe Screens campaign, the Unplugged Coalition and many other organisations.

Speaking to subsection (1)(b) of the proposed new clause and turning to improving

“the regulation of children’s homes, fostering agencies and other settings”,

I will sound just one note of caution. I am totally in favour of cutting out the cowboys, but the Government should exercise their powers to restrict profits and impose unlimited financial penalties with caution. Residential settings for children and other groups are very out of favour in the private equity space, and further restrictions on their financial flexibility can only reduce capacity. The public sector has no money, as we all know, so in order to increase capacity, private sector professional operators must be encouraged.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

This is a Second Reading speech, but it is very interesting. Does the noble Lord accept that the charitable sector and social enterprises probably have quite an important role to play in the delivery of residential care for children and that flexibility will help with the finances of that because they are not in the business of making excess profits?

[Lord Nash (Con)]

There are many in the charity sector that are professional, but there are many others. I do not think we disagree about this.

Turning to other settings, I am an adviser to the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation, which works with more than 200 independent and state boarding schools across the country to support care-experienced and vulnerable children into often fully funded school bursary places. A significant proportion of the almost 300 children supported since 2021 are either with foster carers or in kinship care arrangements. Those in kinship care arrangements have achieved a 100% stability rate, which means that they have not needed to change carers, and those in foster care a 98% stability rate. Independent research by the University of Nottingham shows that they are four times more likely to achieve good GCSEs when compared with a matched control group, and 75% of them are going to university versus just 13% of care-experienced young people nationally. RNCSF is working hard to expand this provision, and I would be grateful if the Government could consider meeting its representatives to discuss how they can help it to do this further. Perhaps the Minister could indicate that she or one of her colleagues is prepared to meet them. They are good people.

For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers: Interim Update

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

In terms of the clarity of the judgment, as we discussed last week in response to the statement, work is already going on across the health service and other parts of government service. But, as with other judgments, the important clarity around some of the complexities in the application of this judgment will be provided through the statutory code that the EHRC is producing. I look forward to that.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, notwithstanding what the chair of the EHRC has just said to the House, it is quite clear from businesses, the hospitality industry and, today, the Football Association, that its interim guidance has created huge confusion, so I would like my noble friend the Minister to confirm for the House that the EHRC interim update is just an update: it is not legally binding. Can that please be made clear by the EHRC?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I think I have been clear to this House, both today and last week, that the statutory code of practice that the EHRC is responsible for producing will be the legal basis on which there will be interpretation of the judgment. I welcome the noble Baroness the chair of the EHRC’s commitment to ensuring that there will be wide consultation on that.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, do not worry about cross-party co-operation between the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and me. We hope to influence the Bill in some ways. I am delighted to welcome this early Bill and the priority that my Government have given to this issue. I also congratulate the noble Lords who made today’s maiden speeches. I want to raise two matters. One is about what is not in the Bill and one is about what is.

I agree with Coram’s brief that babies, infants and early years are missing from the Bill. I know it is not because there is not work being done on early years, but the Bill contains “Children’s Wellbeing” in its title so surely we need to address baby, infant and early years well-being. I declare an interest as a trustee of the charity Roots of Empathy UK, whose programmes are about reducing aggression, increasing sharing, caring and inclusion, and promoting resilience, well-being and positive mental health. Its work would be an appropriate matter for discussion during the passage of this Bill.

While I applaud free breakfasts to start the day, ensuring the school readiness of our youngest must include more—for example, speech and language development, particularly for those who need it. One in five children is faced with these challenges, and recent research says that children with speech and language challenges are being unfairly punished in our schools. The excellent work of organisations such as Speech and Language UK has informed the policy in this area for successive Governments, including my own, and during the passage of the Bill it would be good to explore the vital nature of this work and its importance to children’s well-being.

Now turning to what is in the Bill, I welcome the commitment to improve the children’s social care placement market and tackle the profiteering going on there, which the party opposite has allowed to happen for the past 14 years. Measures include establishing a financial oversight regime to increase transparency for care providers and their corporate owners. I welcome measures to enable the Secretary of State for Education to implement a cap on the profits of non-local authority providers of children’s social care, but I am concerned about the words,

“if other market intervention measures do not have the desired effect”.

We already know that the market does not work, so why would we wait?

I support the creation of regional care co-operatives, which may transform the commissioning landscape, but I hope it also means that social economy and charity solutions will be considered. I commend to my noble friend the Minister the Juno project in Liverpool, the Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust and Social AdVentures in Manchester in rethinking residential children’s services.

I have three final matters. I support improvements to the Bill to protect children from corporal punishment within the family. I have worked on that with other noble Lords across the House for the 27 years I have been here.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on new faith schools, which should be subject to the 50% cap on faith-based selective admissions that currently applies only to faith academies. With the noble Baroness, I will also be asking why we have a daily act of worship.

The last matter is one that I know I will not be alone in raising: the Who is Losing Learning? Coalition found that, for every child formerly permanently excluded, 10 more are moved through informal and unregulated means. That amounts to more than 30,000 children, a conservative estimate, being shifted around the system with little or no oversight. Alarmingly, that lack of accountability means that in many cases no one, including the Department for Education, can say with certainty where these children are.

There are many challenges, and I look forward to working with my noble friend the Minister and other colleagues across the House.

“For Women Scotland” Supreme Court Ruling

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sure that the Civil Service, we as lawmakers and all public bodies will look carefully at this ruling and the statutory code of practice that will be brought forward by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I add that, the last time I was asked, I referred to a woman as an adult female from this Dispatch Box—that was before the ruling.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, if noble Lords read the whole document, they will see that the judge recognised the sensitivity of his judgment. My noble friend the Minister has also recognised the need for compassion, respect and dignity, so I ask her whether the Government can ensure that the EHRC, in producing guidance, will give the trans communities their right to be consulted in the creation of the new guidance and information shared with the public. Can the Government ensure that the EHRC will look at this very carefully before it is announced?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

One of the important things about the EHRC’s production of the statutory code of practice, and other forms of guidance, is that it consults as widely as possible, as my noble friend outlined. That is one of the ways that everybody will be able to be confident about their rights and the rights for trans people that remain in the law now.