Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Lords Chamber

The HSE’s capacity and will to fulfil that role have been seriously questioned. After Brexit, it did not just have to fund a 40% increase in its chemicals workforce; it also had to become the regulator for building safety and dangerous goods, such as explosives, on an organisation-wide budget that was down by £122 million—43%—between 2010 and 2020. In 2025, the HSE had nearly 3,000 staff and 900 inspectors. That was well below the more than 4,000 staff and 1,500 inspectors it had in the 2000s. Will the Government be boosting the clearly inadequate resources of the HSE?

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is making some very serious points. However, in respect of the responsibilities of the HSE, surely she recognises that it is not just restricted to workplace activities? Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act explicitly mandates the HSE to take account of any harm produced by workplace activities to the public.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising what is essentially my next point. Yes, the HSE has these responsibilities included, but its whole raison d’être is workplace safety. There have been many concerns that it does not have the regulatory or conceptual framework to truly consider environmental safety either for humans exposed through consumption, for example, or for the natural world.

This Government have added a growth duty for the HSE. Janet Newsham, a trustee of the Workers Policy Project, has noted how this compromises the independence of the HSE. If it has a duty to economic growth—that great God—it has got to balance that against health and environmental risks. Will the Government reconsider the growth duty, given that it is clearly hampering the HSE’s work?

Returning to the detail of the SI, I note that the environmental charity Fidra concluded that the draft regulations were

“not fit for purpose due to lack of specificity and lack of statutory timelines which could result in inaction or slow progress on critical chemical regulatory controls”.

On other recent concerning official pronouncements, I will start with the CLP elements of the SI. The Minister in the other place supported aligning with the UN’s Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, known as GHS, rather than aligning with the six new hazard classes introduced by the EU.

The Minister in the other place repeated the claim from the HSE that there is a question around what the EU will do if these classes are not adopted globally. That prompted the European Commission to formally put on the record that it had not expressed any such commitment. Can the Minister confirm that the Government understand that the EU’s position on the CLP, as it is so clearly stated, is not to change to the UN model but to keep to its own, reflecting its better understanding of the growing risks?

I turn to the detail of the SI, to which the Minister also referred, and the powers about foreign jurisdictions. I note what she said, that the EU is the only regime that fits within the Government’s classification. I welcome that assurance, but I wonder whether the Minister will consider what might happen if we had in future a different Government who might interpret those regulations in a different way.

I rather suspected we would have some more Northern Ireland people here. I am running out of time, but I raise the issue of what problems this raises for Northern Ireland.

The final element of my concern is around making it easier for UK exporters of some of the most harmful chemicals to bypass controls. These are the products we have decided are too dangerous to use in the UK. Can the Minister assure me that removing the need for a special reference identification number from the HSE is in line with our commitments under the Rotterdam convention on prior informed consent? Is this not just a reflection of an ideological attachment to this idea of cutting red tape, which has done so much damage across so many areas of our safety?

I note that, as campaigners often highlight with UK exports, last year we exported 8,500 tonnes of pesticides that are banned on British farms because of the dangers they pose to human health and nature. Some 98% of these are produced by the Swiss-headquartered, Chinese-owned agrochemical giant, Syngenta, and include huge quantities of diquat, which is reported to have caused symptoms in Brazilian farmers including tremors, temporary paralysis and permanent eye damage.

There has been enough exported of the notorious bee-killing insecticide thiamethoxam, banned here in the UK, to spray an area bigger than England. This is going to countries including Côte d’Ivoire and Morocco. A broader question than this SI is: are the Government planning to act on this clearly morally untenable and environmentally dangerous situation, which is a risk to people around the world? Ultimately, it is about the health of everybody: no one is safe until everyone is safe, and there may well be products coming back to the UK from those countries on which those products have been used.

I have one further specific question that I was asked to put to the Minister, because there is considerable concern about this. We have seen disbanded a regular Defra event, the UK Chemicals Stakeholder Forum, which had offered media, NGOs and other stakeholders some degree of access to chemical updates from the HSE. Are the Government planning to restore or replace that forum so that the public are able to scrutinise our chemical regulations?

I am aware that I have said a lot of very technical stuff and a lot of very large words, but this is stuff to which your Lordships’ House really needs to pay attention. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has a very long report with many expressions of concern in it. I have not yet decided whether to put this to the vote—I am well aware of the situation with fatal amendments—but there is real concern across many different NGOs and people concerned with public health, and it is really important that we have a full debate on these issues. I beg to move.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran: head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend where necessary. I would like to pass on the experience of a head teacher who told me recently that he had had to permanently exclude two pupils who had set the school on fire; they were successfully moved back to a PRU.

I am now in the rather bizarre situation of speaking against an amendment to which I put my name: Amendment 459. As a teacher, I thought that this amendment was eminently sensible, given that the police would still be able to decide whether or not to act. But I found out that it is more complex than that. Rebecca Warren, the executive principal of the Mossbourne trust, says:

“I agree that on the face of it this appears eminently sensible as one would think it is vital to ensure that all services are alerted to ensure that the perpetrator … and victim are offered necessary support. Given that the police service is one of the three arms of Safeguarding Boards (along with the council and healthcare) then police should be alerted and equally responsible for the welfare and safeguarding of children. An act of violence against an adult in a school environment is, in itself, a safeguarding concern.


However, I am dismayed that once again no duty is placed on the police to respond or act. So, in the absence of a collegiate approach, I worry this will become just another duty for teaching professionals with no duty placed on fellow services. I must emphasise that this should not become yet another safeguarding duty placed on the shoulders of schools, with schools being potentially penalised if an act is not reported. Reporting to the police is very likely to erode the trust between child/home and school. This is only worth risking if there is a definite response and support from the police for the child and family.


My question is why the professional judgement of educators is deemed to be less worthy than the professional judgement of the police ie: educators have a statutory duty to report (and must always support) but Social Care and the Police have no statutory duty to support when a report is made”.


Peter Hughes, the chief exec of the Mossbourne trust, makes this plea:

“This Bill is in danger of treating schools as if they are full of idiots without the ability to make sensible decisions. Schools, as the second class citizens in the safeguarding arena, spend more time with children than the other three safeguarding partners combined. We are the only service that is in loco parentis 190 days a year from the age of 4-18. Like any good parent, we need to make judgments about what is in the best interests of our children balanced against society and the other members of our family (students and staff). I would ask that we are afforded that right”.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 501 by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and will speak to Amendment 464 in my name and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for all of whose support I am most grateful. The amendment implements and supplements an excellent recommendation of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. It is difficult to understand why it has been left on the table when racism has been acknowledged as a problem in schools for so long.

Gypsy, Traveller and Roma parents have reported racist incidents as a reason for opting for home education for as long as I have been concerned about these communities. One of the problems in their case is that, because the children are usually white, they are often not recognised as members of a legally defined minority ethnic group. But they are ill-treated, ostracised and bullied for that membership just the same. Now, we also have seen religious prejudice, incidents and taunts demoralising children and undermining their motivation. This totally belies the right to freedom of religion and belief. It really is time to put this right and record and report such incidents. They should have no place in the conduct of the school day. Unless the data is captured, the position will not be understood and improved. This is an amendment, surely, whose time has definitely come.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 502YF in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Bailey, to require an assessment under the Children Act when a child is permanently excluded. The reason for this amendment is that, in my experience, when a pupil is permanently excluded without an adequate handover or adequate liaison between the school and the local authority, there is a risk that the pupil disappears into a black hole. I have sat on, thankfully, few PEx panels—we really do not like excluding pupils in my trust. I have always hated having to exclude a pupil, not just in its own right but because they just disappear from view.

In my view, schools should continue to have some involvement, if not responsibility, for PEx students to ensure that they receive adequate provision. As things stand, they have no say in where children go when PExed, often because the local authority has an arrangement or a contract with one or two AP providers such that there are no other options—and, of course, in some areas, the AP providers have no capacity. As I have said, that is why we desperately need more such provision. I would like to see schools with greater involvement in this. I understand that, in Milton Keynes, there is a model where about a dozen secondary schools—11, I think—co-operate well with the local authority on this. That could perhaps be a model for the future.

I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran in this group. Poor behaviour by a few students has a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of a school. Teachers spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with a few pupils who exhibit very poor behaviour, and they are increasingly acting as social workers. We must protect the other pupils in the school, and we must support our teachers. There comes a time when the disruption this causes to other pupils and to teachers means it is necessary to exclude certain pupils.

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[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 472 and 479 briefly but very warmly. I will not try Treasury terms, though as a former civil servant, I of course recognise their strength.

Quite apart from the intrinsic value of enabling happiness, which I confess is my underlying reason, well-being has instrumental advantages for society. It stimulates motivation, energy and concentration, particularly for demoralised and alienated children, such as those from minority-ethnic groups who have experienced constant prejudice and belittling, among others. It encourages them on to a pathway of achievement. We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds and on free school meals are more likely to have lower well-being, as are care leavers. In our credentialised society, improving motivation and raising achievement can reduce the disturbing proportion of NEETs who slot aimlessly into routes to unemployment and crime.

I think well-being is allied to a sense of self-worth—after all, if you feel your world does not think enough of you to value your happiness, you may well feel that you are not worth it yourself. It is this absence of sense of self-worth and self-respect that I noticed most strikingly among the criminals I met when I was a magistrate; also among the children at risk of delinquency who I used to run a club for; and even among a few so-called normal children when I did some teaching; and more recently in encounters with embittered adults whose childhood had surrounded them with prejudice and discrimination. Children can be resilient and can triumph over adversity if they are motivated enough, but the erosion of the ability to cope, which suffering and the absence of well-being causes, has clearly undermined an increasing number.

Well-being has been notably increased by the right kind of design and architecture in schools, and particularly by music education, including singing. There is good evidence for that, but well-being needs to be measured systematically in all schools. This would do much to start embedding a stable culture of resilience and happiness in our schools, so I very much hope my noble friend the Minister will accept these amendments.

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YG, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, and other noble Lords. Your Lordships may well have seen the helpful briefing from the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, of which I have the honour to be a parliamentary ambassador. For those noble Lords who have not had the chance to read it, I will share some brief highlights, given the hour.

Two children per class suffer from food allergies, on average. If your allergic reaction to milk, cheese, nuts or anything else triggers an anaphylactic shock, you need an immediate dose of adrenaline injected with an EpiPen, also known as an autoinjector. Half of all of England’s schools have not got one—that is 10,000 of them. Two-thirds of teachers have not had any formal training on what to do if a pupil suffers from an anaphylactic reaction or shock—and that is in the buildings outside the home where children are most likely to have an anaphylactic shock, unsurprisingly, since they spend six hours a day, five days a week, 38 weeks a year there.

I am confining my remarks on this amendment to the support of all elements relating to EpiPens and autoinjectors, but I support all of the amendment. Your Lordships can see from my comments that requiring all schools, not just half of all schools, to have an EpiPen and someone who knows how to use it has the potential to save lives and reassure countless parents that their children will be safe at school.

Your Lordships might be wondering why so many schools are completely unprepared for this sort of emergency. Schools have a vital day job to do. It is hard enough teaching maths to children who are not interested—please insert your own least favourite lesson if you happen to be a mathematics enthusiast—so is it fair to load this responsibility on to them as well? I gently say that all that is being asked at this point is that an EpiPen is in the school reception and that there is someone who knows one end of it from the other. I am not joking—I am afraid that there has been at least one incident of a member of staff injecting themselves with adrenaline rather than the pupil in shock.

Another argument which might be used against the amendment is that it is surely the responsibility of the pupils at risk to carry their own EpiPens and of their parents to make sure that they do. This is true, but I imagine that my noble friend the Minister agrees that it is not realistic to assume that every child will follow the rules every day without fail. The evidence shows that pupils are most at risk when they are 15 to 17 years-old, precisely the age when they are most likely to take risks.

I have spoken in this House on this issue before, as the mother of a now 17 year-old pupil who has suffered two episodes of anaphylactic shock. Yes, she has two EpiPens in her bag and yes, I try to make sure that she always does. But just like any other mother, I know that things do not always go to plan. I live with that fear just like so many others.

Shortly after my daughter’s first anaphylactic shock, 10 years ago, her doctor at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, just across the river, asked for my phone after her emergency treatment. To my astonishment, he then took photos of my pale, limp and silent daughter as she lay in my arms. He explained to us that we should print out these photos and give them to her grandparents, her friends’ parents and anyone else who was a bit doubting that severe peanut allergy is really dangerous, and keep one for her first boyfriend in years to come, so that everyone who might have to treat severe allergies would understand that this is what can happen, and that the adrenaline in EpiPens is life-saving.

It is well worth requiring schools to keep them and for them to know how to use them. They save lives.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose this amendment. Time does not permit me to properly debate and discuss Amendment 471, so I will confine my comments to Amendment 465. I thought that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Weir, were very apposite, and I more or less wholly agree with him.

I want to specifically talk about the first part of the amendment, which would replace the duty to provide an act of worship with

“an assembly which is principally directed towards furthering the spiritual, moral, social and cultural education”,

rather than the specific issue of replacing the daily act of worship. This amendment contains an incoherent phrasing that, in effect, amounts to an imposition of humanist beliefs. To refer to spiritual education, regardless of religion or belief, is absurd. To refer to moral education, regardless of belief, is irrational. It is impossible to make moral judgments without beliefs about what is right or wrong or beliefs about how these judgments should be made.

It is not possible to understand British society and culture without regard for the religious beliefs that have shaped its literature, music, art, history and institutions. The exclusion of religious belief from a social and cultural education in assemblies is illogical and will restrict pupils’ understanding. The assumption that it is possible to provide an assembly

“directed towards furthering the spiritual, moral … education of the pupils”,

without regard to belief, is illogical. In effect, these new assemblies would promote humanist beliefs and provide pupils with a highly partial account of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education.

As humanists are keen to point out, not everyone is religious. There are people who hold non-religious beliefs, but these are beliefs, and consequently shape the perspective, values and attitudes of those who hold them in ways that are not neutral. They are sincerely held, but they are not universally held. This is why Humanists UK, for example, campaigns so vigorously—it needs to persuade others who currently disagree with it.

There is also a disparity in parents’ rights to withdraw their child. Currently, all parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective acts of worship, but this amendment allows parents to withdraw their children from assemblies in schools that contain an act of worship but does not allow parents to withdraw their children from humanist assemblies. This two-tier system is deeply inconsistent and unfair. The state educates children on behalf of parents with their permission, and not against their wishes; the amendment is inconsistent with Section 9 of the Education Act 1996, and incompatible with Article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. I surmise that there has been no consultation with the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church or any religious bodies on this in respect of this amendment.

Without the context of religion, the content of these assemblies will inevitably focus on issues of a political nature, and views on these issues will have to be considered with religious perspectives excluded. There are already concerns about political impartiality in schools, and this amendment risks making matters worse.

Britain and its values are rooted in Christianity, and this continues to be reflected in our national life. Currently schools can accommodate important national days, such as Remembrance Day, within their acts of collective worship. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke in favour of the Private Member’s Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, earlier in the year, which aims to achieve similar changes to this amendment, arguing:

“Children need to be taught early the importance of generosity, kindness, neighbourliness … community support”.—[Official Report, 7/2/25; col. 968.]


But the fact that these are valued in contemporary British society is due in large part to the impact of Christianity. These values have positively transformed society and are still cherished in modern Britain. It is impossible to explain the development of these values to pupils without regard for the context of the religious beliefs from which they arose.

There is an assumption that Britain is becoming an increasingly secular country, which is used to support these amendments, but it is not borne out by recent studies which demonstrate a sharp increase in young people attending church. Dr Rhiannon McAleer, co-author of The Quiet Revival, states:

“While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church—particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago”.


The present legislation already allows for the consideration of all beliefs, and requires the head teacher to have regard for the background of pupils in determining the extent to which collective worship reflects Christian belief. If still unhappy, parents can withdraw their child. The proposals are trying to fix a problem that does not exist.

There is also the issue that the amendment extends to Wales, where the education system and governance are devolved.

For all the reasons that I have laid out, I oppose this damaging and wholly unnecessary amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

As it is late, I shall just register my support for Amendments 465 and 471. I agree that a large number of young people and their parents do not adhere to a religious faith. It is clearly valuable and important for them to learn about the central faiths that influence our culture, but they are also entitled to have access to moral and ethical frameworks which do not depend on a religious faith so that they may arrive at their own moral compass. These amendments would enable that positive development.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all three of these amendments, but in the interests of time I shall make two brief remarks about Amendments 463 and 465.

On Amendment 463, I agree with all the contributions made thus far, but with a focus particularly on the relationship and sex education part of it. I think that it is also important that we focus on the PSHE element of that. This is education about the financial sector and managing personal finances, something that it is generally agreed there is a real shortage of. This is education about physical and mental health—and I cross-reference the earlier amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about the importance of physical literacy in particular. It is also about rights and responsibilities. We have to note that, with votes at 16 now being government policy and coming in this direction, it is surely important that we provide education about voting and our political system to young people in our further education system.

When I say that we need that kind of education, people sometimes say that that is an argument against votes at 16. I think that 16 year-olds are as well informed about our political system as 60 year-olds, and they all need more information and more education. Educating 16 and 17 year-olds will also provide information that will disseminate out into the general community through their family, friends and colleagues in the workplace.

On Amendment 465, I want to respond directly to the noble Lord, Lord Weir, who, I think, suggested that there was something odd about the idea that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, had previously brought two Private Members’ Bills—I have spoken in support of both—and that their subject was now being put forward as an amendment to a government Bill. There is a very well-trodden path for—

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Some critics claim that the strictly Orthodox community fails to teach basic skills. Yet these charges come from anti-faith lobbyists, not educational charities. Engagement with a Bill about child welfare should teach us to listen to small minority voices and not only to those who are most powerful and vocal. Humanists UK is entitled to its views, but Orthodox Jews are entitled to their faith. In reality, much work is under way to strengthen home-schooling standards and resources. I therefore urge the Minister to accept this amendment, so that yeshivas are recognised for what they are: faith spaces operating alongside home education and not unfaithfully forced into a category in which they do not belong, even if they are, to quote, “too Jewish”.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I was going to speak in support of Amendment 451, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, but perhaps he is going to introduce it when he winds up for his Front Bench. What I have to say is probably relevant to the wider aspects of this debate. I declare that I am a patron of Humanists UK.

I have listened to children speaking about the unregistered schools that they went to, of all faiths. Of course this is only about some schools. Nevertheless, I was very struck by what they had to say about the paucity of the curriculum, often about the enforced dogma of what was taught, sometimes about abuse and sometimes about a very anti-social and anti-democratic ethos. Of course this does not at all represent all faith schools, but those children themselves were not alone.

In short, we need to get a grip on unregistered schools, especially in the case of children for whom education has not been working well, as in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I very much look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s explanation of how we navigate this real problem in the free and diverse society we live in, as we must—we must navigate it. Unregistered schools are not all good—on the contrary.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, the concern of those who have spoken against Amendment 427C in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, is, if I have understood right, around whether these pupils are being safeguarded. Proposed new paragraph (h)(iii) says

“where the institution demonstrates to the Local Authority that it provides the required safeguarding measures”.

That is important. If it did not say that, I would be joining those who do not want this amendment.

The noble Lord said that it is wrong to call these schools and to think that they are providing education, and that the education being provided is in home-schooling. In terms of safeguarding, the amendment is very clear: the local authority must be satisfied that safeguarding measures are in place. Therefore, for me, the arguments fall away because the drift of them was about whether there is sufficient safeguarding for these pupils.

Because the amendment is quite sensitive, I was not going to speak to it or support it. Having heard the arguments, I am persuaded that proposed new paragraph (h)(iii) answers the question. Therefore, I am bound to support this amendment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

That is not the case, as I understand it, but perhaps we could speak about that afterwards.

Most importantly, the regime is effective because inspection is best conducted by experts who know the sector. The ISI is made up of people who understand how it works. That is particularly true for boarding schools, which have a very different operational model from the vast majority of schools that Ofsted inspects. The noble Baroness rightly talked about accountability, which is an extremely important point. Peer review, in this case, is the best way to produce some form of accountability, but we will have to differ on that.

ISI is also, as the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said, self-funding. So it is no burden on the taxpayer, which is an important point, especially in the current economic circumstances. Changing this tried, tested and effective system would be costly, placing additional burdens on Ofsted; it would be disruptive; and above all, it would almost certainly weaken standards of inspection because inspectors would be unfamiliar with the types of schools they were looking at, and therefore what issues of which to be mindful and aware.

I hear what the noble Baronesses say, but I do not believe the case for such a significant and expensive change has been made; nor, indeed, is there any clamour within the sector, or from parents and teachers, as far as I know, for radical reform of this sort. I hope the Committee will reject these amendments.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, among several interesting amendments in this group, I support in particular Amendments 432A and 434 in the names of my noble friends Lady Blackstone and Lady Morris of Yardley. My reasons are exactly as I set out in our discussion of the previous group, so I will just sum up to my noble friend the Minister that we need to have an effective grip on unregistered schools, because of the undoubted harm to education and well-being being done—by some of them only—with impunity.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 432A from the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Blackstone, who spoke very well. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, is not here. He spoke very movingly, but I do not believe that any group in our society should be given the right to entirely exclude themselves from mainstream British life.

I was the Faith Minister for a time. I was assiduously courted by them; they are very good at that and were charming people, but I had to fight with them to get them to speak and teach in English, let alone all the rest of a broad curriculum that allows one to function properly in our society. For the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey—I am not sure that she is here—to compare it with an easy-going Sunday school feels disingenuous. Sunday school is unlikely to be 10 hours a day, and these yeshivas are of course running for 10 hours a day, five days a week.

This is an important issue and I hope the Minister will look at it carefully, because otherwise, we will be setting a very dangerous precedent.

Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as a former civil servant, I had responsibility for compensation for industrial illness schemes. Updating the regulations is to be welcomed but I have two questions for the Minister. I agree with my noble friend Lord McKenzie about the unfairness for dependants.

My questions concern the 2008 mesothelioma regulations. First, Regulation 4(1) stipulates that the claimant’s exposure must have been in the UK. There used to be a considerable amount of asbestos on board ships, where mesothelioma—as my noble friend Lord McKenzie said, it has a long latency period—was contracted by many claimants. Can the Minister confirm that personnel at sea on UK ships outside territorial waters are in the UK for the purpose of the regulations?

Secondly, do the tables in the schedule take account of up-to-date increases in the average age of mortality when computing the relative amounts per age of the complainant? In that context, these sad deaths, usually caused in the ordinary routine of earning a living, are all the more premature and might merit larger sums.

Employment

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The noble Lord makes an excellent point. This is a complicated area. We have had some large-scale debates in which we have had some very interesting contributions from all over the House. One of the most important things that the Government are trying to do is restructure the market so that we have sustained genuine employment. One of the most encouraging figures that we have seen is that the number of untrained people who have moved into the middle section of the market has improved quite strongly over the past four years.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister said about genuine employment, but following the questions from the two noble Lords opposite, which he must have welcomed, can he say what is the median annual pay of those new jobs?

[Lord Freud]

All I can say on what is happening in the market in terms of real disposable incomes is that we are now seeing inflation falling below the level of pay increases. In the latest set of figures, regular pay went up by 1.8%, compared to a 1% rise in inflation in the same period. We have seen some extremely encouraging forecasts. I cite the Ernst & Young ITEM Club forecast that real disposable incomes were likely to rise by 3.7% in 2015.

Architecture and the Built Environment

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Whitaker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the Farrell Review of architecture and the built environment.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Design and Innovation. The United Kingdom is very lucky to have Sir Terry Farrell’s magisterial Review of Architecture and the Built Environment at the very moment when we have a crisis that requires a very large number of houses to be built fast; when we have pressure to question the tall towers of London; when our undoubted national talent in architecture is rarely matched by equal calibre in planning; and when our citizens, at local level, have the new responsibility of developing their own neighbourhood plans.

The intellectual cogency of Sir Terry’s review has impeccable authority not only because of his own distinction, but because of the breadth of its consultation among experts, representative organisations and lay people—and it has some very nice diagrams, intelligible even to the non-expert.

What problem was it set to address? Those of us who have been depressed by the meagre and dismal quality of some recent public housing and have feared a return to the disasters of the 1960s and 1970s might have thought that reason enough, but in his preface Sir Terry also talks about the increase of urbanisation, the onward march of digital technology and the challenge of sustainability. The Minister, Mr Ed Vaizey, who is much to be commended for having commissioned it, reflects in his foreword to the review on the,

“critical importance of architecture and design in all aspects of our lives”.

The profound impact of our built environment on the way we live our lives needs to be better understood.

In effect, we would be missing an extraordinary opportunity if we did not get the systems and culture that create good and sustainable place-making right for our time now, and we would do irreparable damage to the fabric of our communities if we missed that opportunity. Our systems and culture have not got it right, although there are examples of great achievement here and there. That is what this review sets out to tackle.

There is a large number of detailed conclusions and recommendations, which I hope all those responsible for planning decisions will study, but they fall into simple broad categories. Interestingly, education comes first. The recommendations travel from ensuring that children at school understand the importance of the built environment to equipping architects and all those involved in planning decisions with the skills to engage the public in making sound decisions—and to being better able to make them themselves. This leads naturally on to ensuring quality, including restoring the profession of planning to its rightful high place, making space for design in infrastructure decisions, and the role of industry and public procurement. There follows an imaginative section on the part played by our cultural heritage, and another on economic benefit.

Through all these sections, several cross-cutting themes run: there must be better understanding of what place-based planning and design is really about; better connectedness between all the institutional stakeholders; better public engagement through education and outreach; a sustainable and low-carbon future for our built environment; and a commitment to improving the everyday built environment—to “making the ordinary better”.

In Sir Terry’s conclusion, an overall built environment policy that can rest outside government is proposed, with an independent PLACE leadership council. PLACE is the acronym for its constituent parts—planning, landscape, architecture, conservation and engineering. There should be a government-appointed chief architect to sit alongside the current chief planner and the chief construction adviser on the council. So it has a broad sweep, based on a very detailed analysis, with clear recommendations. I strongly support all these.

In the time permitted, I just want to pick out a few of the more detailed proposals. From the education section, I was particularly taken by the idea that planning committee members and highway engineers, among others, should be trained in design literacy, with the dedicated commitment of the professionals concerned. For too long we have suffered cities and housing estates made fit for the motor car and thereby also made polluted, dangerous and ugly for people to walk in and children to play in. I am also a fan of proactive planning, as recommended in the review, and have long admired its results in the Netherlands and in Sweden, where there is some of the most varied and attractive public housing in Europe. This would really only work, again as the review says, if design reviews were more widely available, much more participative and not just for new applications, but, say, to revive a high street. The plea for government leadership in explicitly valuing the long-term benefit of well designed places, as well as setting up new institutions to carry forward these values, is well made. What is the Minister’s response to this?

I had rather hoped for a bit of detail on space standards, so important in lifting the quality of public housing in the days of Parker Morris and honoured now only by the Mayor of London; and for post-occupancy reviews of new-build housing by the people who live there, but the frameworks proposed by the Farrell review could easily welcome such features.

In conclusion, to implement this review would transform those parts of the UK that most need it. It would harness our undoubted talents in building and design for the benefit of all of us, rather than the fortunate few. Many of us are proud to live in Britain because of its tolerance, humanity, the beauty of the landscape and our civic energy and conscience. Would it not be good if we were as proud of our built environment and the national well-being that that would create, so clear in some of our places, so lacking in others? What does the Minister say to the recommendations of the Farrell report?

Atheists and Humanists: Contribution to Society

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I intend to go rather farther back than my noble friend’s powerful speech. I congratulate him on giving us this opportunity to go a little wider and deeper than our usual deliberations. My thesis is that our idea of the good society has its roots in many traditions, some of which are humanism and atheism, and that the contribution of humanist thought is significantly underrated and denied its status in our education and our social policy. I declare an unremunerated interest as a vice-president of the British Humanist Association, whose causes my noble friend has so eloquently described.

By “humanism” I do not mean the Christian Platonism of Erasmus and his followers, although it is perfectly reasonable to call them humanists because that is what he called himself. For the purposes of this debate, I mean people whose ethical framework is unattached to religious belief. Strictly, I leave out later thinkers whose ideas chimed with humanism such as Montaigne, who would have courted death if they spoke in those terms. However, rather as early Christians thought Virgil was one of them, I hope that I can count Montaigne as sympathetic to the values of humanism.

Democritus, from fifth century Greece, was clearly an atheist. For our debate, perhaps his most significant contribution was his idea that there were systems which controlled how materials behaved—in effect, physics and chemistry. He also had a clear picture of the difference between subjective and objective perception. Both these extraordinarily modern-seeming theories offered an alternative to the supernatural and shamanic versions of the world available at the time. Bertrand Russell thought Democritus was simply lucky in his conclusions, but Lucretius, Democritus’s much later Roman disciple, gave a series of empirical arguments for the same beliefs. The great beauty of De Rerum Natura is its idea of a world determined by natural laws. It was astonishingly prescient—and, incidentally, was saved for our post-classical world by a Christian scholar. We do not acknowledge these two giants much as we go about our lives but we still stand on their shoulders, in Isaac Newton’s graphic phrase.

I should also like to claim the sceptics of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire, but more exactly he and some of his contemporaries were deists, so perhaps I may call them fellow travellers. There were certainly avowed atheists among them, such as Diderot and the German Matthias Knutzen, who proposed conscience and reason as the only guides to behaviour. We could also claim Spinoza, with his idea of the human mind. To jump a couple of centuries, we teach George Eliot and Thomas Hardy as civilised and penetrating writers, but do we acknowledge equally their atheist values? I think we could with advantage put John Stuart Mill’s pellucid Three Essays on Religion, which is actually about morality, on the sixth-form reading list.

Why does it matter to give humanism its due? After all, world views come and go. Who today respects the truths of Zoroaster—apart from the folk my noble friend referred to? Before some eminent Parsee Member of your Lordships’ House gets up to say, “Ahura Mazda lives”, perhaps I may hastily say that we should respect humanism, at least, because of the enduring nature of its tenets and, above all, their capacity to unite people of different faiths and none in common values.

What would this greater contribution produce? It would strengthen the part played in ethics by conduct. It might give some credit to a tradition that goes back even earlier than the Abrahamic religions—much earlier even than classical Greece—to the religious tolerance of Ashoka, the great Indian king of the sixth century BCE, or to the idea of human rights in the Code of Hammurabi three centuries earlier. It might draw a continuum from those milestones to the atheist inventors of the United Nations and its founding charter of human rights. I wish that this Government respected what human rights are really about, as their founders down the centuries have. Acknowledgment of humanist traditions of thought would help to put that in proper perspective. More emphasis on conduct rather than faith or revealed axioms would be beneficial in the education of our diverse society. It would make a better way to educate our children together to form one society, whatever their affiliation to a particular religion or belief.

I personally would not like to see too much downgrading of the status of religion in a secular society. The values of the great religions of the world are inestimable and it would be foolish to deny the fundamental role of Christianity in our culture, or of the one I am closest to: Judaism. The influence of Islam, especially from the Andalusian period, is underrated. The great religious patrons financed some of the greatest art the world has seen.

What I hope for is an understanding of the importance of ethics and morality that allows non-religious systems equal respect. I am heartened in this by occasional references by right reverend Prelates to those of faith and of none. I ask for an equal place in our counsels and advisory bodies, and, most of all, in the education of our children. It should be the primacy of an ethical framework in our public policy, not the primacy of religion, that matters.

Of course people are entitled to draw a religious conclusion from the awe-inspiring features, and the challenges of evil, in our world. Those of us who grew up in the 20th century will have noticed the need for redemption. If some people over centuries, even millennia, have not found it right to fit that into a religious framework but have nevertheless developed the values that we honour, we should make sure that we know all of the shoulders we are standing on.

Town and Country Planning (Temporary Stop Notice) (England) (Revocation) Regulations 2013

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, this order removes the restriction from the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 on a local authority’s powers to serve a temporary stop notice in respect of caravans which are used by the occupants as their main residence, where there is a suspected breach of planning control. Hitherto, a local authority could issue a TSN in these circumstances only if it considered that the risk of harm to a compelling public interest arising from stationing the caravan on the land in question was so serious that it outweighed any benefit to the occupier of the caravan of stationing the caravan there for the period of a TSN.

The Government say that unauthorised caravans can often cause immediate and significant impact on the local area and that this is no longer to be weighed against the interests of the occupiers. The order equalises the planning authority’s powers in regard to caravans used as a person’s main residence with other types of development. That is the point. Parliament has rightly in the past made a distinction between a caravan which is somebody’s home and all other types of development. There is a huge difference between stopping ordinary breaches of planning control and depriving a family of their home, with devastating consequences for their future. Not only do they become homeless, but their access to education, health and other public services is seriously prejudiced.

The Community Law Partnership deals with a great many planning cases on behalf of Gypsies and Travellers and in its response to the consultation, it said that the untrammelled use of TSNs would lead to breaches of Articles 6, 8 and 14 and the first protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 6 deals with the right to a fair hearing and there is, of course, no appeal against a TSN. Article 8 covers the right to respect for private and family life, which is obviously impaired when a person or family is evicted. If councils provide a five-year rolling supply of land with planning permission for Traveller sites—as required by 31 March this year under the CLG’s Planning Policy for Traveller Sites—and if they refrain from using these powers until those sites are provided, a great deal of unnecessary human suffering would be avoided. It would also avoid the additional public spending which is incurred in dealing with the health, social and educational problems caused by the notices.

Not a single local authority has implemented PPTS, three months after the Government’s deadline. Essex, for example, expects only to complete the preparatory assessment of need demanded by the policy six months hence; and no authority has identified the required five-year supply of deliverable sites. That word “deliverable” means that they should be,

“available now, offer a suitable location for development now, and be achievable with a realistic prospect that housing will be delivered on the site within five years”.

I would be grateful if the Minister would explain why this information, which is so crucial to the success of the Government’s strategy for Gypsies and Travellers, is not collected centrally. When a delegation from the Gypsy APPG asked Brandon Lewis, the junior Minister at the CLG, this question last Tuesday, he said that it would be a top-down approach, contrary to the philosophy of this Government. He added that it was up to local planning inspectors to deal with the failure of councils to comply with the PPTS as they saw fit.

I ask my noble friend if that means widespread rejection of local plans and random granting of appeals against refusing planning applications by Travellers. For the last 50 years we have said that the problem of unauthorised sites arises from the failure of the political system to provide adequate accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers. Governments have generally agreed that accommodation is a key factor, not only in dealing with unauthorised sites, but also in tackling the appalling educational, health and other social disadvantage suffered by Gypsy and Traveller families. Yet they have ducked the responsibility of ensuring that these problems, affecting 0.02% of the population, are resolutely addressed. On the contrary, their priority has been to make life harder for those who have nowhere to live, as this order will inevitably do.

That brings me to the prohibition of discrimination in Article 14 of the ECHR, taken together with Protocol 1, Article 1. This entitles a person to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. This combination calls into question the difference in treatment between Gypsies and Travellers, who may be deprived of their homes without notice or right of appeal, and gorgias—that means non-Gypsies—who are protected against this treatment by Section 171F (1)(a) of the 1990 Act. The JCHR has drawn attention to the risk of breaching these ECHR provisions, as well as those of Article 2 (1)(a) and Article 5 (b)(3) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

In some cases, the use of a TSN may be contrary to the public sector equality duty, particularly to the requirements in Section 149 of the Equality Act, to:

“Advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”.

There may also be cases where, because of our adherence to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the use of the TSN may be unlawful because it would not be in the best interests of a child. Under the Health and Social Care Act, too, the Secretary of State must have regard to health inequalities in exercising his functions. Will my noble friend explain how he can do that if Gypsies, who are already at the bottom end of the scale in morbidity and mortality, are harried from pillar to post, unable to seek the medical attention that they may need?

The Explanatory Memorandum says that the Government intend to produce guidance to assist councils in taking into account human rights and inequalities considerations and balancing those considerations against the impact of the unauthorised development on the local area. However, the guidance is likely to be so general as to be useless in enabling the council to decide whether it is safe to issue a TSN. It will hardly venture into the dangerous territory of predicting how the courts will deal with a particular set of circumstances.

Councils may be aware in general terms of the need to take account of human rights and equalities considerations in deciding whether to issue a TSN, as the consultation showed. However, the Explanatory Memorandum envisages the possibility that they may use these powers inappropriately and may then be challenged by judicial review. However, since the order has been published, legal aid for such cases has been withdrawn. Do the Government really believe that Traveller litigants in person are likely to launch judicial review proceedings?

Almost certainly, the families targeted by a TSN will end up back on the roadside, with all the disastrous consequences for their access to healthcare, education and other public services that are well known from evictions such as Dale Farm in 2011. The public expenditure costs downstream are likely to be enormous. This no doubt explains why the Government make no effort to quantify them.

Forty per cent of respondents to the consultation felt that the impact of the changes on caravan occupiers would be unacceptable—as it certainly would be when they have nowhere else to go. The government response to the consultation on the Taylor review of planning practice guidance was published in May. Will the Minister confirm that the guidance on the use of TSNs will be part of the new guidance suite that will be published before the Summer Recess? Will the guidance say that councils should use TSNs only once they have a five-year deliverable supply of sites in place? If it will not, these regulations put the cart before the horse. The draconian power to make people homeless should be invoked only after a local deficit of sites has been eliminated.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, when on 13 February this year the Department for Communities and Local Government concluded its consultation on the proposal to change the temporary stop notice system and, in effect, leave it up to local planning authorities to determine whether it is right to evict families from unauthorised caravan sites irrespective of the availability of other sites, special circumstances of health and education, or any kind of disproportionate impact, more than 40% of responses stated that the impact on Gypsies and Travellers would be unacceptable. However, six weeks or so later, on 29 March, just before the Easter bank holiday, the Secretary of State, Mr Pickles, announced that he would go ahead with measures that he unveiled just two weeks later. His precipitous move means that there will now be a complete absence of any need to consider, let alone provide, an alternative legal site if a family, even in great need, perhaps with an oxygen machine or with a heavily pregnant mother, is evicted from an unlawful site.

Noble Lords will know that unlawful sites happen because far too few councils have made a proper assessment of site need, let alone made new council sites or approved private ones. Therefore those families—not a large number—who have been obliged to stop on unauthorised ground will be even more disadvantaged, sometimes dangerously so. Nor, if the Ministry of Justice’s proposals go ahead, will judicial review be as available as in the past.

Is this warfare between communities necessary? Is it essential that in addition to enforcement notices, injunctions and direct action, councils should be able, without any corresponding duty to provide or allow the small number of sites required, to remove whole families into a further progression of illegal stopping, and enduring a lack of facilities such as mains drainage, piped water and rubbish removal, which will further deny their children education and their sick people healthcare?

It is not as if there are not examples of much better practice. The successful pilot of the negotiated stopping system in Leeds is one of the best. Everyone took part: the council, the police, the local Traveller support group, Gypsy and Traveller families themselves and local businesses. Leeds City Council estimates that it has saved more than £100,000 so far by avoiding eviction and clean-up costs—a far cry from the millions of pounds spent in the Dale Farm disaster. It also says that access to healthcare, education and training has significantly improved for the roadside families concerned. Your Lordships will well understand the benefit of that for community cohesion and for the prospects of employment and, in some cases, life itself.

Councils need to be encouraged through the legal framework to behave like this, not discouraged. How will the Government achieve improvements? I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi’s famous answer to the question of what he thought of English civilisation. He said, “It would be a good idea”. A good start would be to drop these regulations.

Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, when I worked in the Health and Safety Executive, mesothelioma was recognised as the most dread of all occupational diseases. It is as yet incurable. There is no safe threshold, so that the smallest exposure to crocidolite or blue asbestos could produce it. There are many cases on record of a few weeks’ work or less in which the tiny fibres lodged fatally in the lung cavity, producing a lingering, miserable death in breathlessness and pain. A little girl contracted it simply from being around her grandfather’s work clothes. It was diagnosed when she was in her 40s.

Almost worst of all, although the toxicity of asbestos generally was recognised at the very beginning of the 20th century, effective preventive regulations had to wait until the 1970s. The import and use of blue asbestos was not banned until 1985, after many hard fought legal battles. As it is a disease with a long latency period, those dangerous conditions from before the ban are still now producing cases of mesothelioma.

The disease is now recognised to be so clearly linked to occupational exposure that there have been arrangements for compensation for some time, but there are obvious difficulties when an employer or the employer’s insurer goes out of business. Any improvement on the present system, where invalids not infrequently die before their case is settled, is an important step forward.

The Government’s proposals are therefore welcome. While there are aspects of the Bill that could, and I hope will, be improved in the time-honoured way in which your Lordships’ House deals with legislation, I, too, congratulate the Minister on bringing the Bill before us.

As other noble Lords have said, we shall need to look at the rationale for making the cut-off date for diagnosis as of last year and for setting the compensation cap at 70% of the average. Both will result in arbitrary and inequitable decisions. Some victims of occupational exposure with an equally valid claim will not be covered, as my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport explained. There is much to tease out in the proposed system itself. I look forward to the Minister’s further answers to these points. I hope that he will offer the possibility of adaptation in the interests of fairness.