Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

As has been said, such assessments must be seen as a powerful tool to protect the interests of children, in particular vulnerable and marginalised children. They not just uphold the interests of children but protect them and their individual rights, and do not treat them simply as objects of concern. Children’s rights should not be put into effect only partially and selectively. Assessment should be seen as central to the decision-making and of practical value. It should be seen not as another bureaucratic burden but rather as routinely manageable with a light touch, as the noble Baroness mentioned. If children’s rights are to be applied consistently, coherently and fully, they should be underpinned by statute, at least as far as this amendment would allow. We should therefore use the opportunity to implement the clear recommendation of the Covid inquiry.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I too have added my name to this important amendment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and indeed with the late great Judge Munby, that a full incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the gold standard to which many of us campaigners have long aspired. Tonight, however, we are talking about just one little part of it—a very important part.

Devolution has often allowed the devolved nations and regions to do something different and more adventurous—to show the way. Wales and Scotland have done just that, particularly in relation to children. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said in her opening speech, both Wales and Scotland already have a mandatory system of child’s rights impact assessments. As a resident of Wales, I will say a little more about how it works there, though I also congratulate Scotland on its approach.

Over the years, in discussion with former Minister Edward Timpson and former Minister Zahawi, sometimes accompanied by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, if I remember correctly, I have promoted CRIAs for the sake not only of the children themselves but of effective and efficient government. In similar conversations today, I could have now called in aid the fact that, in Wales, research has shown that CRIAs, where properly applied, result in better attention to children’s rights under the UNCRC and better outcomes for children. Crucially, in the interests of efficient government, they help to prevent complex and expensive litigation later when things go wrong. These proactive and preventive measures can ensure that we get it right first time; surely, that is what we all aspire to do in making policy.

The recent debate on the regular report of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales showed how deeply the language of children’s rights has permeated parliamentary scrutiny and debate in the Senedd. Over 250 CRIAs have already been carried out, covering multiple areas. They have not been found to be disproportionate, as the Minister seemed to think in Committee when she said that voluntary arrangements would be less challenging and more manageable. As a matter of fact, I think they should be challenging. However, as with the Welsh laws on mandatory reporting of child abuse, the CRIA system has been implemented in a way that is both sensible and proportionate, with a screening procedure at the start, which indicates whether UNCRC rights are engaged by the policy under discussion.

Many years ago, I had a discussion with officials at the DfE about how the Government prepare for their five-yearly report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, according to their obligations under the convention. There appeared to be no system at all, resulting in a bit of a scramble every five years when the report date was looming. I pointed out that if CRIAs were done and recorded routinely, not only would they produce better policy but they could form the foundation for the regular report without a lot of fuss. By the way, it would certainly result in more favourable concluding observations in the Committee’s final report. I am afraid we really are an outlier in several respects.

However, although a template was produced in 2018, soon after Minister Zahawi took over from Minister Timpson, they have not been routinely used, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said. For the reasons that I have outlined, this is a missed opportunity. I hope the Government will have a rethink in line with Amendment 221.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, we admire the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her relentless focus on this issue, which is obviously well intended. But as we made clear in Committee, we are not in a position to support this amendment. Our reservations stem from the belief that its remit would extend to every ministerial decision that may have, either directly or indirectly, an impact on the well-being of children. It may add an additional legal layer of bureaucracy to a legislative process that is, unfortunately, already weighed down and could therefore hinder the decision-making process. While it is no doubt intended to improve the well-being of children, it has the potential to be detrimental to swift and decisive action in the best interests of children, and for those reasons we are not able to support it.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. The purpose of Amendment 104 is to ensure that no eligible family misses out on the Healthy Start payments, as there is evidence that many families have not been aware of this important extra support and have therefore not applied for it. I have tabled this amendment again because I was not content with the Minister’s response in Committee, but I thank her for her subsequent letter.

During that debate, the Minister said that she could not accept my amendment because the Healthy Start programme requires an eligibility check as the funds come in the form of a prepaid card. This, she said, is a financial product and therefore requires the recipient to accept the terms. Will the Minister please note that my amendment, in proposed new subsection (3), takes note of that fact and requires that the eligible person must be able to opt out of the scheme if they wish. That, of course, implies that they also opt in.

This could be done by rejecting the terms of the card offered, rather than accepting them. However, the Minister went on to say that to increase uptake, which she agreed is important, the NHS Business Services Authority will write to those eligible to encourage them to apply to the scheme.

Three questions arise from that answer. First, if the NHS Business Services Authority is going to write to those who are eligible, it must have already found out who is eligible. If that is the case, why can those people not be enrolled, informed that they have been enrolled and, finally, given the chance to opt out if they wish? I cannot imagine that many will.

Secondly, now that the Minister has laid Amendments 111 and 112, which I am sure she will explain in a few minutes, it is clear that government departments will now be able to share information for the purpose of ascertaining eligibility for free school meals. I hope we can assume, therefore, that the NHSBSA will also be able to get information from other departments to ascertain whether the families are eligible for Healthy Start. If the NHSBSA is going to write to eligible people, will it at least enclose an application form and prepaid envelope to make it very easy to apply and accept the terms? There should be no need for the recipient to have to supply any further evidence of their eligibility, because the NHSBSA will already have established that, or it would not have written to them in the first place. What possible further checks are needed?

Thirdly, can the Minister say how long this programme will take to get up and running? Will she undertake to report to Parliament about to what extent this activity has improved uptake over the first year of its operation? I look forward to the Minister’s reply on that matter.

The purpose of my Amendment 113 is to ensure that schools and caterers are supported to provide adequate, affordable and nutritious food at breakfast and lunch to all the children at the school, whether they are on free school meals or they pay. I have laid the amendment again because there are several questions to ask about the Minister’s Committee stage reply and there have been developments since Committee.

The amendment requires the current school standards review to be completed within 12 months of Royal Assent and that a supportive scheme be set up to ensure compliance with those standards. This timescale is not a lot to ask, given that the then relevant Minister in the Department for Education promised me almost a year ago, when I discussed with him the recommendations of your Lordships’ House’s report Recipe for Health: A Plan to Fix Our Broken Food System, that the review would happen. It took until 5 June 2025 for an announcement that consultations would take place. Oh, how slowly the wheels of government turn. However, the Minister promised in Committee to share the details of this consultation in due course. Can she say now when “due course” will be? She said that it will include how to ensure whether schools comply with the updated standards. Currently, there is very little inspection and enforcement, the responsibility having been given to school governors. It must be said that some schools provide a very good standard of food but others do not. It is not always their fault.

Research carried out by Professor Greta Defeyter of Northumbria University has shown that larger schools, especially those in areas where not too many pupils are eligible for free school meals, sometimes manage to benefit from economies of scale, and some actually make a profit from the allowance they get for free school meals. However, this is not always spent on improving the general quality of food in the school.

However, there are others, particularly small schools in areas of high deprivation, in which the free school meal budget has to be supplemented from the education budget. There is certainly nothing left over to improve the food overall. This is crazy, given the importance of good food to child health and development. There are certainly questions to be asked about how the allocation of funds works—not just in theory but taking into account the facts on the ground. However, I am talking about the quality and affordability of all food served in schools, not just the free school meals. This amendment is not about free school meal entitlement. It is more important that free school meal children get a nutritious meal at lunchtime because their parents may not be able to give them one in the evening—or sometimes any meal at all.

--- Later in debate ---

With those remarks, I hope that I have addressed the noble Baroness’s concerns and that she feels able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, responds, I would like a small point of clarification from the Minister. I very much welcome the government amendments and congratulate the Government on what they are doing on free school meals. This is all very welcome, but in introducing it, the Minister said that the additional cohort would get a free school meal on request. She mentioned how the Government will make it easier for families to find out whether they are eligible, but can she say a little more about how they have to apply? Will it be as easy as possible?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Absolutely, it will be. First, by virtue of the fact that it is now open to all those on universal credit without the £7,400 cut-off, it is much clearer to families, to those supporting them and to schools who is eligible. Secondly, as I said, the provisions that enable the sharing of information, and therefore eligibility checks, will now also be open to parents themselves, not just through local authorities.

Carers: Financial Support

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I know the noble Baroness has much experience in this particular area. On the carer’s allowance, I can reassure her that we continue to review the limit and make changes where we feel they are warranted and affordable. The carer’s allowance has an earnings limit, which she alluded to, which permits carers to undertake some part-time work; it also recognises the benefits of staying in touch with the workplace, which we regard as important, including providing greater financial independence and social interaction. As the noble Baroness will know, it can be extremely lonely and very hard work being a carer, as the hours are often long and the work very demanding.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, a place in a local authority care home will cost a local authority a minimum of £800 a week, which is over £700 more than is paid to a carer who cares for more than 35 hours a week, as carer’s allowance is only £76.75. Does the Minister agree that the Government and local taxpayers are getting a very good deal on the backs of unpaid carers?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We definitely want to applaud the huge number of unpaid carers who work in our society. Caring for a family member or friend, as we know, can be enormously hard work but it can also be incredibly rewarding. To pick up on the noble Baroness’s point, means testing comes into this and this can increase weekly income and act as a passport to other support, including help with fuel costs through schemes such as the warm home discount and cold weather payments, and more recently payments to help with increases in the cost of living.

Child Poverty: Ethnicity

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, on his excellent speech.

This ONS report is very interesting. I want to focus on food poverty. I particularly value the granularity of the data because it allows us to explore which elements of a child’s experience and background affect their educational attainment. The ONS has made a clear the link between poverty in general and educational attainment and, within that, the excessive representation of certain ethnic groups.

First, I believe that the provision of free holiday meals should be extended to all holidays when schools are closed for whatever reason. Children do not get hungry only during the major holidays. Secondly, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, that we should increase eligibility for free school meals and do more to encourage the parents of children in poverty of all ethnicities to apply for them. However, the ONS found that pupils who were eligible for free school meals —FSM—made less progress between the ages of 11 and 16 than those who were not eligible. This indicates that it is the poverty, not the meal itself, which affects educational attainment. However, free meals help to alleviate poverty and help with children’s health, albeit in a small way. For those reasons, will the Government consider reintroducing free lunches for all primary pupils at least, as was done for a time under the coalition Government? There was evidence of better attainment during that period. That may have been because, by removing the barriers to application and the stigma, more pupils who really needed a free meal got one.

However, the ONS found that educational outcomes for Bangladeshi and Pakistani children did not follow this lower attainment trend, since children of those ethnicities who were eligible for FSM had higher Progress 8 scores than the national average. Since the ONS also found that these children are more likely than average to live in low-income homes, this indicates that there is something else operating here to overcome the poverty effect. It is not that these ethnic groups have higher incomes than other Asian groups, but it could be something about the home background and the extent to which the parents positively engage with the child’s education. We need more research to find out whether this is the case. Can the Minister tell us if that will happen?

Of course, when we talk about child food poverty, we are not talking just about free lunches. It is important to make sure that children get a good breakfast by increasing support to the excellent voluntary organisations that provide them to ensure that they are available everywhere and throughout the holidays.

Finally, because all aspects of a child’s life link together to predict their life chances, it is vital to tackle child poverty in the round through housing, special education provision and all the other things that contribute to education and health inequality. Will the Minister comment?

Covid-19: Over-60s

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Shielding was paused on 1 August in England, and clinically vulnerable and extremely vulnerable people are now required to follow the same local and national arrangements as the rest of the population. This means somebody living with someone who is clinically extremely vulnerable is able to attend work as normal if they are unable to work from home.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, at the heart of this Question is how to protect the most vulnerable. At the start of the pandemic, my husband received a letter telling him to shield because of his vulnerability and, as the noble Baroness said, in August he got another letter saying that he no longer needed to shield. Given that virus cases are now doubling every day, what consideration is being given to whether such letters will be sent out again, on what criteria and in which tiers of risk?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The answer to the noble Baroness’s question needs to come from the Department of Health and Social Care. I will talk to my colleague and ensure that a letter is written to the noble Baroness with the answers to her questions.

Universal Credit: Free School Meals

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I heard quite a lot of what was said in another place yesterday, and I am afraid that quite a lot of it is misinformation. One only has to look at Channel 4’s FactCheck, which looked at the claims made by the Opposition about children losing free school meals and was clear that the Government are not taking free school meals from the 1 million children who currently get them. I quote the article directly:

“This is not a case of the government taking free school meals from a million children who are currently receiving them. It’s about comparing two future, hypothetical scenarios”,


both of which are more generous than the old benefits system.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, on what basis was it decided that the earnings threshold for eligibility in Northern Ireland would be double what it is in England? Is this because poor children in Northern Ireland are twice as malnourished as they are in England, or could it be political expediency?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it is not a question of political expediency. In fact, the earnings threshold in Scotland, introduced last August, is lower than what we propose to introduce in England. Let me also explain further, referring—as the noble Baroness opposite did—to the threshold. The £7,400 relates to earned income and does not include additional income through universal credit. Depending on its exact circumstances, a typical family earning around the threshold would have a total annual household income of between £18,000 and £24,000, but let us remember that if we allowed free school meals to continue beyond the transitional period when universal credit is rolled out, we would include parents earning over £40,000 or £50,000. Is that absolutely fair? Is that what noble Lords opposite want?

Fit for Work Scheme

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on initiating this debate and I echo his call and that of other noble Lords for the benefits of the Fit for Work scheme to become more widely known. It really is mad that this great network of provision has been set up at great expense but that so many of the people who should know about it, especially GPs, do not make use of it.

I was so glad that my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester and the noble Lord, Lord Fink, both mentioned people with mental health problems. As the noble Lord said, they are often the primary cause of people being away from work for a long period, but I am sure we all know that many people who have chronic pain or another serious condition also have mental health problems that need to be addressed. I ask the Minister: what training do the occupational health advisers in the scheme have in identifying the mental health aspects of a person’s absence from work and in signposting those people towards treatment that will help them overcome it?

I will concentrate my brief remarks on the issue of chronic pain. As we have heard, 8 million adults report chronic pain that is moderate to severely disabling, such that it prevents them working or living a normal life day to day. But many more people live with lesser levels of chronic pain. The incidence is, understandably, much higher in the older age groups. However, few of those people are likely to be in work and are therefore not affected by the Fit for Work programme that we are debating. However, it often prevents them volunteering in the way that they would like—and we all know how important older people are in that capacity. Most charities would fall apart without them.

In the working-age group, one of the conditions that produces chronic pain is fibromyalgia. I know something about this because a member of my family suffers from it. It is incurable and variable. She had such a level of pain and stiffness as to make it impossible for her to carry on with a job in the public service that she very much enjoyed. Eventually she was forced to take early retirement, which penalised her financially until she reached pensionable age. I know that her employer was very sorry to lose her, and I wonder whether she might have been able to carry on if the Fit for Work programme had been available at the time.

However, the rules of Fit for Work, as I understand them, are such that you are not eligible unless you have been, or are likely to be, absent from work for four weeks. I happen to know that my relative, although she suffered a lot of pain at work, did not have long periods of absence. But in the end, she found it just too difficult and retired early. I suspect that many people like her soldier on with a stiff upper lip, taking stronger and stronger painkillers, perhaps performing well below their capacity and not enjoying life at all. In many cases the employer, too, will suffer from their reduced productivity. I wonder whether more people could be helped if the scope of the programme were expanded to help people stay in work, rather than just to return to work from sick leave. Back pain is so common that I would be very surprised if there were not hundreds of thousands of people working below their full capacity because of it.

My family member worked in the public service and did not have an occupational health department to turn to. The Fit for Work programme fills that gap and is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses that often do not have the resources that are available to big corporates. But the point must be made that public service workers often do not have that, either, because they are scattered in smaller units around the country.

Occupational health professionals can often identify the obstacles that prevent a person returning to work or working at full capacity, and can avert the need for them to leave their job. Indeed, I suspect that these professionals would have a lot more clout when negotiating with employers about reasonable adjustments that could be made than the employee herself or himself. It would seem sensible and desirable that, just as reasonable adjustments must be made for workers with a disability, employers should also be prepared to make reasonable adjustments to help people with chronic pain retain their job and help the employer retain an experienced worker.

I am afraid my remarks have gone somewhat wider than the Fit for Work programme, but I think what I am calling for would also achieve some of the Government’s objectives in setting up the scheme—for example, helping workers, improving productivity and increasing the tax take. I wonder therefore whether the Minister can tell me what action the Government are taking to widen the net and provide more help to a broader group of workers who are living with chronic pain but who keep calm and carry on in the good old British fashion.

Families: Work Incentives

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

As the noble Baroness will know, a reduction and a cost saving are going on in this part of the benefits system. We had to make a decision about how to structure that. We decided that the taper was critical because it moved people right the way down at 65%. We have maintained that level. We have taken it out and reduced the work allowances in other areas. In particular, in our experience, for singles the removal has meant that people move straight through the work allowance out of UC. We have tested people carefully and seen a significant, measurable increase in the amount of work that they do and in their earnings. The work allowance impact seems to be less in those areas.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, in some disadvantaged areas parents are finding it difficult to access 15 hours of good quality childcare. Can the Minister guarantee that all parents, in all areas, will receive 30 hours of free, good quality childcare, to enable them to go to work confident that their children will be very well looked after?

[Lord Freud]

It is clear that when you put up people’s rights, the provision has to catch up. It has been doing so, but there is some way further to go and we will be working on that.

Welfare: Cost of Family Breakdown

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

There was a very substantial long-term jump in the number of cohabiting relationships. It went up over the last Government from more than 600,000 to 1.1 million. It is somewhat flattening now; it currently stands at 1.2 million. The noble Baroness is right in that the actual figure is that those couples are four times more likely to split when their child is under three than if they are married. However, there are some structural and major societal changes behind those trends, and it will take an enormous amount of effort to start putting marriage back into its rightful place. That is exactly one of the things that we are looking to do with the family stability review.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister have a breakdown of the amount of funding that the Government give to those charities that help families in difficulty to prevent the partnership breaking down? Can he say whether there is a role for the Family Nurse Partnership in helping families stay together?

[Lord Freud]

We are running two immediate programmes. The first is to provide help and support for separated families, running in SR10 at £14 million, £10 million of which is spent on an innovation fund that tests various interventions, involving 17 different voluntary and private groups. The other aspect is the relationship support interventions, on which we are spending £30 million. There are three main areas—something called Let’s Stick Together, marriage preparation and couples counselling.

Millennium Development Goals

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Loomba for securing this important debate. I think we would all accept that when you educate a girl you also benefit her family. Although eliminating gender disparity has been a major focus of the MDGs, there are still 31 million girls of primary age not in school.

The poor quality of schooling in many parts of the developing world causes many girls to drop out and return to domestic or agricultural work. In some places the teachers do not turn up, demand bribes or are simply not well enough educated themselves. Among many other charities, the Steve Sinnott Foundation is trying to do something about that by training some of the teachers over here. As has been said, another reason why girls in rural areas do not go to school is because they simply fear for their safety on the journey. Among adult women, literacy rates are rising and the gender gap is narrowing. Even so, women represent two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults.

If we draw any conclusions from the MDGs it should be that development must be holistic to have any real impact. The charity Network for Africa found that Rwandan women were unable to attend their free literacy and numeracy classes or vocational training sessions because they were worried about the safety of their children who were left at home. When childcare was provided, girls were no longer being kept home to care for younger siblings; mothers attended training programmes; and toddlers, who benefited from just one year of nutritious meals and cognitive development games, gained years ahead of their peers in health and mental ability. The women in the project quadrupled their income, on average, after six months. When women know that their babies are safe, they will attend classes and improve their life prospects.

Sadly, MDG progress sometimes disguises the fact that social norms still perpetuate discriminatory behaviour toward girls and women. Until someone challenges the idea that we cannot question traditional culture, no great strides will be made. Therefore, in the MDGs post-2015, we need indicators for social norms embedded into every aspect of development programming.

The MDGs tackle the easy part. The tough part is challenging cultures that keep discrimination against women in every aspect of their lives. The myth that gender equality is culturally sensitive and must be treated with kid gloves has to be challenged and debunked and the importance of universal human rights stressed. The position of adolescent girls is crucial and ought to be one of the focuses post-2015. Adolescence is when girls realise that their dreams are unattainable because of cultural traditions and persisting views about gender roles. It is all very well aiming attention at schooling but if negative attitudes still exist in the home they will dominate girls’ lives.

Finally, I wish to make a point about the importance of education in emergencies; it is an aspect of global education that is often forgotten. Nowhere is this more critical than in complex emergencies like the crisis in Syria. Currently in Syria, 2.3 million children inside the country and 400,000 refugee children are without education. More than 4,000 schools have been destroyed, damaged, used as shelters or occupied. In countries surrounding Syria, refugee children have put a strain on the local education systems. Without education and adequate psycho-social support, these children are at risk of accepting violence as normal and replicating it, undermining their own futures, the future of their nations and the stability of the region. The future of an entire generation lies in the balance; the global community must be more strategic in its planning and take steps now to avoid this lost generation and destruction of the region.

I ask the Minister whether the UK Government will ensure that the post-2015 MDG agenda adopts a 100% target for quality, basic education for all children and that inequalities relating to gender, location, age, and income levels will be tracked in all the targets in the post-2015 framework.