Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak as a design technology teacher, a veteran of the IfATE Act, an officer of the APPG on apprenticeships and a member of the House of Lords Social Mobility Policy Committee.

I think we all agree that apprenticeships are vital to this country. It is rather sad that this subject seems to have led to a general exit from the Chamber, but I think that is more because it is lunchtime. I welcome the defence industrial strategy and its new apprenticeship and graduate clearing system, which I know BAE Systems was heavily behind. We have seen Skills England start, and we hope upon hope that it is the answer. This is an incredibly important and nuanced subject, and I am afraid I do not think these amendments are the answer.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I shall try to make a few remarks in summing up. Apprenticeships really feel like they should be an answer but are proving to be extremely difficult to get into operation. Employers, especially SMEs, find it difficult to give the work, but they are where you would expect to find most of those apprenticeships, especially at the introductory level. Most people have said, “Yes, it’s a problem”. T-levels have been brought in but, if I remember correctly, you have to work with an employer while doing them, and that has proved difficult in the past.

The reason why they are proving so difficult is that it is a bit of a mess. We have boards and so on for careers guidance, and things locally and nationally. We clearly need more emphasis on making sure that people know where these opportunities are, how they will be supported and how they will get through. There is a general duty proposed in the Bill, but something inside me says that, as written, it is an invitation to Henry VIII powers—possibly Henry IX and X as well. The fact remains that we have not got this right. There have been some valiant efforts, but we have not managed to bring the people who want and would benefit from an apprenticeship to those who will give one to them. That is the problem.

I hope that, when the Minister responds, we will get a better idea of how this will work. The levy has, shall we say, had its problems—that would be a generous way of putting it. The Minister has an opportunity to tell us how the Government are going to develop this. It should be remembered that many of the people in the client base have not been that successful academically —I think just about everybody would agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Deben—and the fact is that schools are judged by GCSEs and A-levels. That is the path forward and everything else is a secondary option. That seems to be the culture; Governments have tried to change it, but I do not think they have succeeded. What are the Government going to do to get these more practical-based operations in?

It would be remiss of me if I did not say that we need to look at the English and maths qualifications. I refer to this again as somebody with dyscalculia and 14 fails in functional skills in an apprenticeship. We did some work on this. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is not here because we managed to get some consideration on English when the original Bill was brought forward; both he and I bear the scars of that process. I thank him for taking on his own Civil Service and Government to get it. Any Minister who is prepared to show that degree of courage will always get my support.

I hope we can get an idea of how we are going to address the problems, which have certainly been accepted, associated with getting people into apprenticeships. On the question of the things that should be attractive to those who have not been great successes in conventional education, or according to normal cultural expectations, what are we going to do? We need to act, not only for the nation’s general economy, but for the people who are the clients.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate on the value of high-quality apprenticeships at all levels, with a focus on levels 2 and 3, and Amendment 483 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, and Amendment 483A, which I have moved on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lucas.

The noble Lord, Lord Layard, predictably, gave a very insightful and expert analysis of the issues, particularly for young people who are not going to university, and painted, sadly, an accurate but rather bleak picture. I would agree with him rather than the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, but I think there would be votes in it. The noble Lord said that it would be very popular across the country to take action on this. Anyway, that is not perhaps for this Committee to worry so much about.

I feel that, as I make my remarks, I have former colleagues sitting on each shoulder: Gillian Keegan, the first member of the Cabinet who had previously been an apprentice; and Rob Halfon who saw apprenticeships as a key part of what he described as the “ladder of opportunity”. That is exactly the kind of image and vision that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, set out.

The previous Government did a huge amount of work to raise the quality of apprenticeships and to expand them from some of the more traditional areas into financial services and others to better mirror our very heavily service-based economy and, crucially, to support important areas of the public sector where we have significant workforce shortages. That is in part where level 7 apprenticeships came in. I know that one point that my noble friend Lord Lucas would have made, had he been here, was that level 7 apprenticeships also contributed to that parity of esteem and the sense that apprenticeships could have the same prestige as a degree qualification.

I absolutely recognise the urgency to address the high level of youth unemployment, particularly after recent figures that show how much it has risen in the past year, and to give all young people a sense of real opportunity, which an apprenticeship can bring. We have been concerned at some of the changes that the Government have introduced so far, shortening the length of apprenticeships and removing the funding for apprenticeships at level 7.

I would argue—maybe it is easier from this side of the Dispatch Box—that this should be an area of “both and”. Level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships clearly fulfil a different role in the economy from those at levels 4, 5, 6 and 7, but they are no less important. One is not more important than the other. When we were in office, we were particularly concerned about levels 4 and 5. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s reply to the noble Lord’s amendments. I hope that she can reassure the House that the Government are committed to continuing with the employer-created standards rather than the frameworks that the previous Government introduced and that further moves will be made to secure the engagement of small and medium-sized enterprises in the use of apprenticeships.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who is no longer in her place, made an important point about how to fund an expanded apprenticeship offer at levels 2 and 3. I also very much recognise the comments made by my noble friend Lady Coffey in relation to T-levels. My reflection on that is that these changes take a great deal of time to embed. I do not think that in visiting schools I have met someone who has not been thrilled to be doing a T-level. I visited many schools where children wanted good, high-quality technical and vocational options and were not even aware that T-levels exist. At the very least, the Government will need to do these things in parallel. I hope very much that we will hear a positive response from the Minister.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

Did I say agree? I am still recovering from the interventions. To be clear, I agree with everything that the noble Lord said and would support all four amendments. I thank noble Lords for introducing them.

Children and young people get so much from sport and physical education. It is not just about their well- being; believe it or not, it helps them in their other studies. One of the local head teachers in my area used to start the school day not by doing numeracy or literacy but a creative activity—either sport, drama, dance or something like that—because it got people energised and helped with their learning. Sport is important not just for the mind and body but for the well-being and development of the child as a whole.

I thank noble Lords who put down those amendments. I speak for my party when I say we very much support them.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend has covered what happens in school, but that is just one area of activity. If it is done properly, school is merely part of a greater continuum that goes out into the community. The school sports partnerships were going to save the breakdown in the traditional links between small clubs, grass-roots sports and school, but they were not there for long enough for us to know whether they would. Many of us in both bits of the coalition Government thought that it was one of the weirdest things possible that they were kept going until the Olympics and then cancelled afterwards when we might have got some benefit. I got a small nod from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—a bigger one now—which says, “That’s exactly what we thought at the time”.

We also knew from that and from looking at studies that a big sporting event is great for tourism and volunteering but does not make any difference to grass-roots sport unless you back it up with something—with your inspiration. Schools have to work with the grass roots. In the amendments, we have the start of that structure, which we can go forward with. It is not just in this Bill or with this department. If we are going to lose lots of playing fields in the planning Bill, it does not matter what you do because you will not be playing anywhere else—probably not even at schools. We have to have something that goes forward. These amendments start to look slightly broader.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My noble friend in sport mentioned playing fields. One of the most important roles that Sport England plays is that it is the statutory consultee for playing fields in this country. It was exceptionally worrying when, just a few months ago, the Government announced that they were putting out to consultation whether Sport England should continue that role. Does my noble friend in sport see anybody else performing that role? Will it not be even more damaging to playing fields in this country, which are so important to the public at large, if there is nobody among all the statutory consultees whose job it is to ensure their survival?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

The answer is yes, yes and yes. I hope that the Minister will make sure that her colleagues in other departments take this on board. I moved an amendment on the planning Bill seeking to ensure that this duty is still there. I know that I am asking the Minister to part the Red Sea and take the salt out at the same time, but I am hoping for two parts of government to talk to each other on this.

We want people to remain active for all the reasons that we have stated. Physical activity leads to better exam results, which we seem to forget. If schools are to provide the initial smorgasbord of finding the right form of physical activity for individuals’ physique, culture and temperament, then I hope that the Government talk across departments in support of these amendments. I would like to hear from the Minister that they are having a coherent look at this and that they will lead other departments to do something solid. The Department for Education is best placed. We could ask the Department of Health but it would get buried there. If a lead department takes this on, there is a chance of achieving some of these aims. These amendments, or ones like them, are essential to making sure that we have a duty saying, “This is what you should be doing”.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for raising the critically important issue of sport and physical education in schools, which I personally feel particularly strongly about. If schools were to follow the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and perform physical exercise in the morning before classes, it would be transformational. School sport has no greater champion in your Lordships’ House than my noble friend Lord Moynihan, an Olympic silver medallist and former chairman of the British Olympic Association who has been leading the charge for greater provision of physical education and sport across our schools for many years.

In September last year, NHS England published research that found the truly frightening statistic that 15% of children aged between two and 15 in England are obese. Although that figure is a slight decrease from 16% in 2019, the fact that childhood obesity has remained stubbornly high should be a huge concern for everyone: parents, teachers, the NHS and the Department for Work and Pensions. This issue affects us all in some way or other.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Well, I start by saying that I actually agree with the vast majority of the points made by noble Lords opposite, but I just have to say that we in this House are not disinterested observers of the activities of Governments. Several of the noble Lords opposite who rightly identified the decline in school sports, the reduction in teachers and the narrowing of the curriculum were supporters of or part of the Government who were responsible for it. I just want to put that on the record as we start this.

Having said that, there is good news. This Government are reviewing the curriculum and establishing a new national approach to PE and school sport. We value PE and sport as a great opportunity to improve not only the health but—

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I have one more question. If we are doing this for PE in schools, is there going to be a specific link to activity outside school? A lot of the sports education is done by sports governing bodies and grass-roots clubs. I hope the noble Baroness can give me some reassurance that that will be done.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I know that I added a little bit to the beginning of my speech, but I am actually only three lines through, and I will come to precisely that point.

The amendments proposed align closely with the important practical work already under way by this Government to expand access to high-quality PE and school sport for every child. We remain committed to ensuring that all young people, regardless of background, have the opportunity to thrive through physical education, school sport and physical activity. I also agree with the points ably made by the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Moynihan, about the broader benefits of sport, physical activity and physical education. The impact on academic achievement, mental health, healthy weight and sleep: those are all important elements of the broader benefits that come from children being active and being supported to move in a wide range of ways—something I thought about carefully as I finished the Worcester 10K on Sunday morning.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was very happy to add my name to the noble Baroness’s on the majority of these amendments. She has outlined the compelling need to do something in these interrelated areas sooner rather than later. I will not bore your Lordships but rather try and illustrate one or two examples of what is going on in real time.

I will start with Copilot, a tool that most of us will be at least faintly familiar with—or will at least have heard of—and which is integrated into the Microsoft package that we use in Parliament. At the time that research was started by a group of organisations, including the 5Rights Foundation founded by the noble Baroness, Microsoft, which owns Copilot, stated publicly that Copilot was intended for users 18 and above, such as all your Lordships. However, in May 2025, the company announced without warning that Copilot would become available to users aged 13 and above. This shift raises important questions, none of which was answered at the time by Microsoft. The user age change proceeded without any published child rights impact assessment—which takes us back to an earlier group that we discussed—or documentation of any child participation in this decision. Using it in this way, without any child-focused safeguards, is unlikely to be in the best interests of the child, but currently there seems to be no satisfactory way to hold Microsoft to account for this.

A second example is Vimeo, a popular video channel that some of your Lordships may be aware of. In a particular case where a child used Vimeo and some of its video capability to do his homework, a detailed look at what Vimeo had done with his homework demonstrated that 92 different commercial companies had gained access to this child’s data. Not very satisfactory.

A third example is the problem that data protection officers—each school nominates one—as you might imagine, are struggling to try and understand and keep up with this blizzard of new technology and new tools. There are more and more sophisticated ways of, in theory, giving children a good education, underwritten by hideously long and complex terms and conditions, which I suspect even an artificial intelligence tool would have a problem making any sense of.

An example would be perhaps one of our best known technology companies, Google. It has a very successful edtech business called Google Classroom. Google, as is its wont, packages different Google products together in the same package. Within Google Classroom, you have Google Maps, which I am sure most of your Lordships are familiar with and will use occasionally. Let us assume you are doing a geography project using Google Classroom and, as part of that, you decide to go into Google Maps to use its capability. The minute the child clicks on Google Maps, he or she loses the data protection provided by Google Classroom, which allows Google Maps to harvest all of their data.

That is a real life current example of what is happening in plain sight. Data protection officers are not going to be aware of that, neither are headmasters, students or parents. It seems compelling that the people who should be most aware of that are the Government, the Information Commissioner and the bodies which are there to protect children and guide schools through this extraordinarily difficult complex morass of these competing technologies which, quite rightly to some extent, the Government are encouraging schools to take advantage of. But beware of what you encourage without understanding exactly what it is you are recommending.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when it comes to technology, I think I have a slightly different relationship to it, although the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, may even go beyond me for this. We need it to operate in the modern world. I have said before several times on this Bill that I am dyslexic. I cannot produce a one-page document that is in a readable form in any sort of format unless I use voice dictation. The relationship with technology changes.

If you want to make people independent and they are, in this case, dyslexic—dyspraxics might use the same technology in a slightly different way—you must make sure information is available to them and they can function with it. Having said that, the second part of this is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, that there should be safeguards within it. These things actually go hand in glove. You should have something that allows people to function in the modern world. When you are independent and interacting with a computer, you have to put the correct information in for the computer to function; you have to actually know what you are doing. A balance needs to be achieved.

There is a move to use systems which are built into computers, as opposed to bolt-on bits for educational support. In certain cases, which the Minister is aware of, schools decide to use the free bit of tech as opposed to purchasing it. But the free bit of tech is there to advertise; otherwise it would not be there. There must be a commercial advantage for somebody to provide you with a free bit of tech.

The balancing structure the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, puts forward here is essential to allow those like me who need this technology to carry on using it. We are talking about schoolchildren here, but there will be no shortage of people who will need it in the future and we are identifying more and more all the time. I hope we can strike a balance and make sure we get further forward into it.

The same is true—I am sure we are going to hear about smartphones being the devil’s work—for smart- phones, as it is the information on the smartphone we are talking about. If you can ban social media sites on smartphones and you can block them, they merely become a platform you can fill with other technology.

This is as the Minister gets an answer by using her smartphone. I hope we will get a more balanced approach to this, because it is not all bad, and not all good, it just needs to be used correctly, and using safeguards is something we have not really got our heads around. I am sure most of the commercial companies did not come in with this as their first priority, they just came in as commercial companies. The fact that they said they were platforms and did not need to worry about this is now coming back to bite them. However, I hope there is a balanced approach and a sensible way that we can get the best out of technology.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard, this group of amendments would introduce a number of reviews of the Bill. Those in the name of my noble friend Lord Wei also seek to limit the new powers in the Bill in relation to elective home-educated children.

Amendment 502C from my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth would introduce a review of the Act after five years, and my noble friend made an extremely articulate and clear case for this. I think my noble friend said that there were already over 20 examples of amendments seeking reviews of different parts of the Bill. Although concerns about Part 2—which we have debated more recently—are certainly uppermost in my mind, those of us with long memories will remember some of the concerns about the pace of and evidence base for the reforms to children’s social care in Part 1.

My noble friend set out some criteria for post-legislative scrutiny: it should be a substantial Bill—I think that, on day 12, we can agree this is a substantial Bill; it should introduce major changes; it has unquestionably been controversial; and it did not have pre-legislative scrutiny. I thought almost the strongest point is that this would allow the Government to demonstrate their confidence that the Bill will deliver on the changes that the Government seek and the impact that the Government desire, so I hope very much that the noble Baroness will be able to accept my noble friend’s amendment.

Amendment 505C in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, again very ably presented, highlights concerns about the responsibilities of private providers of children’s social care in relation to children’s human rights. Again, it would be helpful to hear the Minister’s response to this. For my part, I suppose I would prefer the Government’s focus to be on the quality of care that children receive when they are in local authority care, in a children’s home or, potentially, in foster care, as in this case. They already have considerable rights enshrined in legislation, as the noble Lord said; what we need is for the culture in those organisations to make sure that children receive the care that they so very rightly deserve.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Just before the Minister replies, I shall very briefly say that the principle of reviewing legislation is one that I think we have all agreed to and no Government have ever found terribly convenient. I hope that we can get something going and some commitment by the Government that they will look at what happens here, or some structure for reviewing what happens, because the unforeseen is something which no degree of planning now can ever adjust.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The amendments in this group cover a wide range of issues, including review of the Act, disapplication and commencement.

I will begin with Amendment 502YR tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, which seeks to protect a parent’s right to determine their child’s education in the event of a national emergency or an authoritarian Government, by placing judicial oversight above executive restrictions. This amendment would actually be ineffective as, quite rightly, Parliament is sovereign. Any law passed by a current Parliament can be changed or repealed by a future Parliament. Provided the education a child receives is both safe and suitable, existing legislation makes clear that most parents have the right to determine the form of education that best meets their child’s needs. We have of course discussed this at length in Committee and the Bill does not change it.

Turning to Amendment 502C, on reviewing the Act, I start by commending the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, to post-legislative scrutiny, which, as he identified, has been government policy since 2008 and part of the process for legislative progress through this House. I remember the discussions around putting it into that position in my last period of time in Parliament. I supported it then; I still support it now. In the interim period between 2010 and 2024, among the range of things that I was able to do, I was very pleased to be able to advise foreign Parliaments about the significance of post-legislative scrutiny, drawing on precisely the work of the noble Lord and the experiences of this Parliament in putting those into operation.

Alongside that amendment, we have Amendment 502YN, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, which concerns a review of the operation of the Bill’s measures. This Government agree on the importance of having an appropriate mechanism for the proper evaluation of the impact of legislation, ensuring that it meets the goals that it sets out to deliver, especially given the size and wide-ranging ambitions of this Bill in particular. I assure noble Lords that the Bill will be subject to post-legislative scrutiny in the usual way without this amendment. We fully expect that this evaluation will be carried out within the first five years of the legislation coming into force.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to my own Amendment 457 and to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, both of which deal with the issue of faith- based selection in school admissions.

My Amendment 457 speaks to the missing data that the Schools Minister raised in Committee in the other place. The Department for Education currently does not collect data on how admissions policies are applied in schools, and therefore we do not know how many parents are missing out on their preferred school placements because of their religion or because they do not have a religion. Collecting data would shed light on what the impact of faith-selective admissions is for parents and pupils and whether such selection is contributing to or undermining parental choice.

Amendment 456 should, I hope, be uncontroversial. Since 2011, all new faith schools, as all new schools, had to be free schools, and have been subject in their funding agreements to a 50% cap on faith-based selection in admissions when oversubscribed. In this situation, Amendment 456 is a simple tidying-up exercise—that is how I read it anyway—extending a standing policy for free schools with a religious character to all new state-maintained schools with a religious character that could open under Clause 57.

The Government have not in any way suggested that they oppose the 50% cap in principle. Following a consultation on the cap that showed overwhelming support for it to continue, the Government have stated that they will maintain the cap for free schools with a religious character. If the Government are supportive of allowing new 100% faith-selective schools to open, I ask the Minister to state that clearly before the Committee.

I wish to be clear that neither of these amendments oppose the opening or continuing service of faith schools in this country, many of which provide exemplary education for their pupils. What the amendment seeks to do is ensure that faith schools cannot limit parental choice and pupil diversity by hand-selecting whom they wish to accept.

Using selection of faith leads to less inclusion. Church of England and minority religion schools, subject to a 50% cap, have higher ethnic diversity compared with those not subject to the cap. Faith schools compared with schools without a religious character in the same catchment area have been found to accept fewer children on free school meals, according to the Sutton Trust; fewer children in care, according to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator; and fewer children with additional learning needs, according to research from the London School of Economics. Amendment 456 and my Amendment 457 would promote fairness and parental choice in the schools admissions policy. I commend them both to the Committee.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to my amendment in this group and leave the summing up to my noble friend. I use the term “off-rolling” in this. It may be out of date and unfair, but the fact of the matter is that there has been an increase in the number of children not in school over recent years. A Commons report on the issue came out in 2020, but it has been exacerbated by the Covid situation. It is about time we had a real, in-depth dive into why more and more pupils are not within the mainstream system.

There has been some suggestion that the academy system wanting to get rid of bad pupils is to blame or that the greater emphasis on special educational needs has led to the thought that people might be more trouble for the school. I would like to know. I know that some of the academies—the better ones—have fought against this. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, getting extremely annoyed about the idea of that practice in a Committee stage debate on another Bill. If there are academies that are avoiding it or some that are falling to this, we should know. If academies are here to stay, under this Bill, whether we like it or not, because we have accepted them, can we find out whether there is a specific problem there or if it is something else? The increased number of people not in school is a problem that we have referred to throughout Committee, and it is about time we had a decent and in-depth look at it.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make very few remarks. I am an active humanist and I would like to identify my support for the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and my noble friend Lord Watson. I hope that the Government will take heed of what these rather modest amendments propose. If there is something that needs to be discussed, I ask that my noble friend the Minister calls together those of us who are interested and committed to this to talk about it.

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In 2021, the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce published From Lament to Action, which set out recommendations to eradicate racism in the Church of England. Education surfaced as a priority area for action, with commitments to ensure racial justice featuring as a core element of curriculum, staff training and school assemblies. There is, of course, much more work to be done, but this amendment would enable us to make long overdue progress.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of comments. When children fail, it is usually the result of a cocktail of inputs. One of those is frequently special educational needs. If you do not believe it, just look at the prison population—a gross overrepresentation of virtually every single special educational need you can mention. We do not get this right or spot it early enough. There are several more groups that touch on this, and I hope that when the Minister starts to sum up, she will have in the back of her mind how this all fits together.

Often, both the victims and the perpetrators of bullying have special educational needs—somebody does not fit in, they look for somebody weaker, and so on. It is disruptive to a classroom, and it affects everybody else. If you get in early enough, along with the other considerations made here—and I fully endorse the comments made about racism and so on—it can bring the whole thing together. How are we doing that? How are we working it in? I would hope that the Minister has an answer.

I would also hope that it does not fall on the teacher in the classroom. We are asking them to do a superhuman task anyway. What support are we going to give? We are going to come to this again and again. We may not get the Government’s strategy on the special educational needs bit in full until later on. If we could get some idea of the thinking, it would help in future debates on the Bill, both at this stage and on Report.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 502E in my name. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, just said. To judge by the numerous safeguarding and similar cases in which I have been involved as a lawyer, it is the failure to share information that causes huge damage and often leads to that cycle—the revolving door of children going in and out of school, which leads to many of them going into custody for crimes when they are not very old.

My Amendment 502E is an uncomplicated attempt to provide consistent standards and process in the way in which individual schools focus on bullying. I am grateful to the Anti-Bullying Alliance for providing me with information on this subject. The truth of the matter is that huge numbers of children are bullied, and we see it every day.

A few days ago, I was on a bus in north London at the time when children are just going home from school. There were three noisy, normal-looking 11 or 12 year-olds on the bus laughing and pointing through the window at something. I realised that they were pointing at another boy, on the pavement, who was actually the largest of the group. I deduced from what I saw that they had tricked that boy into getting off the bus at the wrong stop and then had got back on themselves. Off the bus went, and they were laughing at the disconsolate fourth boy as the bus passed him by. It was a small example of bullying, but what I saw was evidence—possibly, at least—of a much larger bullying issue relating to that fourth child.

It is a heartbreaking reality that over one in five children and young people report being bullied each year. That figure comes from the Office for National Statistics. It is a pervasive issue which not only disrupts their childhoods, mental health and education; its repercussions can persist well into adulthood. Many of us know people who have been affected by bullying, particularly at school, which they suffered from at a very young age.

There is plenty of evidence that children who are bullied are significantly more likely to suffer from mental health issues. I used to be the chair of a mental health charity called Addaction, now called We Are With You, which has to deal with many people who, among their multiple and often complex issues, suffered from bullying when they were young, either at school or possibly in the home. Children who are bullied often miss school, have a very poor sense of belonging and achieve poorer academic results. Parents learn that their children are being bullied, but they do not know how to deal with it because, in many schools, they are not given any real guidance on how to approach the school or what the school will do if their child is bullied.

The effects of bullying are even more pronounced among children with special educational needs—about whom we will soon be talking in another group—children in poverty, young carers, care-experienced young people and other at-risk groups. It really does not have to be this way. My suggestion is that something like my very straightforward Amendment 502E would at least ensure that schools have a consistent approach to these issues.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister that, in pursuance of their duties, head teachers of relevant schools in England should appoint a member of staff simply to be the school’s anti-bullying lead, just as they have leads in the sixth form and individual subject heads. The primary role of the anti-bullying lead should be to develop the school’s individual anti-bullying strategy, and that strategy should include details of the steps being taken by the school to prevent bullying in all its forms among pupils, including of course those with protected characteristics. There should be a standard way of recording incidences of bullying, just as there are standard and required ways of recording incidences of injury at school. Staff training on bullying should be available for all staff. I submit that this amendment is just common sense, and it would make a significant contribution to the way in which bullying is dealt with at school, to the advantage of children.

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[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I was delighted to put my name to Amendment 490, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, because it took me back to thinking about my experience at school, which admittedly was a while ago. My parents used the work of Baroness Warnock to threaten to sue the Secretary of State for Wales over my right to go into mainstream education. Without that, I would not have had the career that I now have. The system that existed back then took a tiny percentage of disabled children and gave them a great education, but everyone else was left languishing in a special school system that did not even allow children to sit exams. At the school I nearly ended up in, I would have been able to sit three CSEs at most. So there was nothing around looking at the ambition of disabled children.

I had hoped that things would have moved on by now, but the reality is that disabled children in the UK still face a significant educational attainment gap compared to their non-disabled peers. Studies show that they are significantly behind in key exams and assessments and are less likely to achieve higher qualifications or degrees. The Education Policy Institute has research that shows that disabled children are some of the most educationally disadvantaged children in the English state school system. Around four in 10 children are identified as SEND at some point between the ages of five and 16. These children have been shown to have multiple grades lower than their peers. I find myself in a slightly interesting situation: I agree with some of what the noble Lord, Lord Gove, said about making sure that children are not absent, and I am certainly not seeking to expand the definition of “SEND”, but there has to be something in the middle of where we are now and where I came from through my educational experience. To me, it is about getting the right support to the children who need it.

Disability Rights UK has reported on the situation with the gap. There is a huge gap for disabled children, and it is even larger for children with an education, health and care plan. In 2019, children with an EHCP scored grades that were 3.4 places lower than a those of a non-disabled child, and by 2020 that gap had increased to 3.6 places lower. Whatever we are doing, it does not feel like we are able to educate and support disabled children in the best way that we can.

We already know that, when disabled people apply for jobs, they need at least a qualification higher than a non-disabled person. If the job requires a degree, a disabled person needs at least a master’s or a PhD to have a chance of getting it. If we do not get this right, we are not giving disabled people the chance to work, pay taxes or contribute to society.

Like other Members of your Lordships’ Committee, I feel that we need to understand where we are and what is required, whether through a royal commission or however it works out. This amendment fits with amendments I have tabled in other groups that talk about teacher training, because there is more that we need to do to make sure that teachers are in the best position to educate and teach everybody in the class. At the moment, that gap for disabled people is just too big.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will say just a few words, inspired particularly by the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson.

We know that there is an attainment gap for those with disabilities, and we also know that bits of the education system do not help. The biggest one for me—and I remind the Committee yet again that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association—is English and maths, because guess what, the British Dyslexia Association also covers dyscalculia.

About three days ago, I sat down with a child who said that they had a brother with dyscalculia who had been made to sit English 14 times and still had not achieved a pass. What an incredible waste of time, because we have decided that English and maths are gatekeeper exams. People have a better target with English, because they seem to understand it a little better, but maths is a real problem. Getting some degree of flexibility and understanding and looking at the attainment gap and what causes it would be very helpful.

However, I must slightly disappoint my two, shall we say, noble colleagues on this—I do not think that I am allowed to call them noble friends, although I hope that they are friends—by saying that we would have to say, “identified special educational needs”, because we might know somebody who is blind or deaf, or who has impaired movement, which is pretty obvious. We know that, for instance, well over half of the dyslexics in the country are never identified. We do not know the situation for the others—dyspraxia, et cetera—and we are still very bad at identifying them.

Therefore, we could adjust this amendment to say that we should have a look at the attainment results of those who have been identified. That would give us an idea of how the system properly fails, because we know that there is a problem, we just have not addressed it. There is a problem that is running through here. When the Minister replies, I hope that she can start to address this, because we know that there is a problem here. We know that something is going on. If we have that information already, which we should if the problems are identified, we might be able to bring it forward, because addressing the problem itself would help.

Briefly on the other amendments, tutoring, if properly targeted, will help these people, especially if the tutors are trained to support. Also, for those in prison— I have worked in the prison sector, not extensively, but I have worked there—the fact that a child is disadvantaged or comes from an environment where everybody is expected to fail will probably work into the other two groups. As a dyslexic, I still say that the only time I have ever sat in a group of adults whose educational attainment was below mine was with a group of prisoners, and I am pretty badly dyslexic. How we address this problem, this idea and this culture is very important.

I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some idea of the general thinking of the Government. It is very important—if we are starting to address these deep-seated problems, which we have, in many cases, given lip service to in the past—to get support for which you do not have to fight and be a tiger parent to obtain. That is where we are coming from now.

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Moved by

[Lord Addington]

461: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Establishment of a national body for SEND(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, establish a national body for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in relation to children.(2) The functions of the national body for SEND will include, but not be limited to—(a) national coordination of SEND provision for children,(b) supporting the delivery of SEND support for children with very high needs, and(c) advising on funding needed by local authorities for SEND provision for children.(3) Any mechanism used by the national body for SEND in advising on funding under subsection (2)(c) should be based on current need and may disregard historic spend.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to establish a national body for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in relation to children.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for that compliment. We go back to special educational needs here, with a series of amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. My amendment is the most general of them, on a general duty to have a look at special educational needs. Some of the specifics in the other amendments probably should be included in that general duty.

On teacher training, unless you have teachers who are increasingly better equipped to spot conditions and deal with them in the classroom, you are always going to fail because you will have late diagnosis—or no diagnosis for many conditions—or the wrong practice. I am trying to convince people here that getting extra help for special educational needs may be a bad thing if that help is from the system by which you have already failed. If you do not know what is required and are being told “You’ve already failed to do this”—English would be a classic one—you will just not pass. My experience with dyslexia, which I have mentioned once today, is of being given an extra 15 spelling tests, one every week. You fail them all; you carry on doing it, but you just will not pass.

This is because having special educational needs usually means that you process information differently. There can be extreme cases. I have already referred to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes—nobody expects somebody who is blind to copy off a blackboard. You would describe what it is. You have got to have a different system of working and different structures that go with it.

I could expand upon this for ages, but the hour is late and other noble Lords with more detailed amendments are waiting to speak. I beg leave to move my amendment and look forward to the rest of this debate.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I congratulate him on all the work that he continues to do in this area. I thank my friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for cosigning my Amendments 491 and 498. I will take them in reverse order, with Amendment 498 first.

Quite simply, it addresses the issue we discussed in the previous group: current SEND provision is not working. It is not working for the SENCOs, who try their utmost; it is not working for the teachers, who strain every sinew to educate all in their classrooms; it is not working for the parents; and, most importantly, it is not working for children with special educational needs or a disability. Yet it can, if we start from the provision of inclusive by design and set out an approach where the funding is identified and ascribed to that SEND provision. The department should and must reach out beyond its budgetary constraints, because the reality is that this is far more than an issue of education. For example, there is a clear causal relationship between the education attainment gap and the subsequent employment attainment gap for those with disabilities.

Other departments must also pull their weight in addressing this issue of special educational needs and disability provision. This is why in Amendment 491 I suggest a practical, reasonable and achievable measure to make a difference across government: to introduce a mentorship scheme for those young people with special educational needs or disabilities.

Before the question arises of distracting departmental officials from their incredibly important work, or of putting more pressure on already overstretched resources, I suggest to the Minister that this would be an ideal situation for an effective, practical and achievable public-private partnership. Imagine how local, regional, national and international businesses could get involved to help support and be part of the delivery of such a mentorship scheme for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Imagine the empowerment for those young people in hearing from adults in successful careers, professions, jobs, activities and third-sector work, across the piece, who have lived experience of being a disabled person and have come through, succeeded and achieved. That is not just mentorship; that is leadership and empowerment, enabling all those young people.

The scheme could be brought in with minimal, if any, disruption or resource pressures put on the department. The difference it would make for those children with special educational needs and disabilities could be profound, impacting their educational experience, setting them up for life and enabling them not only to positively be part of closing that education attainment gap but subsequently closing the employment attainment gap. Any Government should have this as one of their core provisions. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I am reassured by the amount of attention paid to this subject, and that we are getting through and into the Government’s head. We do not know yet whether the results we have will be delivered. Just to sum up some of the arguments, the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, said that there are problems but there is overidentification or something, if I may paraphrase her. The fact of the matter is that we know that, for many of these hidden needs, these diverse educational problems—call them what you like—we do not identify most of them, and this means that you have somebody in an environment where the learning process is not one that they enjoy. It might be something such as delivering and receiving information, which is usually where the basic blocks are, but there are identified ways to deal with that now, most of which are quite cheap.

There is technology—I declare my interest as chairman of Microlink plc. Most of the technology you have is not specialist any more: a lot of it is on every computer already; it is about structuring how you get at it. It is also about identifying the structure and way in which you learn and making it acceptable in a mainstream classroom to be using it. Headphones are not regarded as a good thing in most classrooms, until you realise that they might be the way you are taking in information. Attitudes to technology will colour this. There is this great thing about no smartphones in school, but there is a wonderful platform to hold assistive technology going through them. Some suggest that these computers, screens and structures are bad things—no, they are not, if used correctly. The noble Earl shakes his head; they are not. We are going through this thing about how we use them, and how we go forward is the important bit here.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, talked about the criminal justice system and special educational needs. He is right to draw attention to it, for this very simple reason: if you want to find what happens to somebody who does not address these needs, go into any prison and talk to them—any prison, for any of the groups. You will find a huge overrepresentation. Autism is greatly overrepresented in there: people who are manipulated or who react badly, with violence. There are so many complications here, but most of the solutions are comparatively simple, flexible, and made more easily available now than they were. I hope that, when we get this review, the Government will accept that they will probably save a great deal of money if they get this right.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was quite right about one thing: when we implemented the last system—and I was on that Bill—I think I managed to convince the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to save one tree in a burning forest. We managed to get a concession on dyslexic youngsters taking apprenticeships, where they did not have to do the exam in that way going forward. That was all, though. We have the rest of it coming through. It is very easy to make mistakes by making assumptions.

Yet again, I hope that the Minister takes back to her department the fact that we are dealing with a problem, which we have identified but are struggling to deal with because the structures are just wrong. Considerations outside special educational needs will bear an incredible weight. I refer back to fact that if you have to pass English and maths to get on to any course, and you are dyslexic, dyscalculic or dyspraxic, so you cannot write quickly, you have a problem. That is the sort of balance I will be looking for from this. It is not just about help; it is about structure. Having said all that, the hour is late, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 461 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. Of course, what he just said applies to any amendment that your Lordships’ House inserts into a government Bill.

The argument for Amendment 465 has already been powerfully made, but we are talking about a law that dates back to 1944. This is a 20th-century arrangement for the 21st century, which, as others have said, simply does not fit our society any more. A poll in 2024 said that 70% of school leaders wanted to get rid of the current legal arrangement.

On alternative moral, spiritual and cultural development, we hear from all sides of your Lordships’ House regular lamenting about how much cultural education we have lost from our current system and how little space there is to fit into the curriculum things such as cultural activities and cultural learning. This provision would be one way to create a little more space for something that is pretty well universally agreed as being essential.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will very briefly say a few words about this group.

On Amendment 463, the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, may have taken up the baton from somebody else, but she did it pretty well—nobody has disagreed with her. It seems agreed that she is on very solid ground. The amendment is about useful information that people should have. I hope that the Government are at least friendly to the amendment.

On the two amendments tabled by my noble friend, I very much doubt that one assembly a week will change anybody’s religious views either way. Not making one point of view compulsory will probably not change religious views either way. The similarity in the values of religions—the fact that we should be nice to people seems to be common across the board—is something that we can probably convey elsewhere; it does not have to be put forward in this way. I do not think that it will make much difference. It would certainly bring it in line with a bigger chunk of the population. If people want spiritual activity somewhere else, it would be available.

I turn to the final amendment in the group. I hope that my noble friend will not hit me too much when I say that the provision should already be there. Any education about religion must include the contrary arguments, so I think this is really belt and braces. I am not getting snarled at by my noble friend, so I think I am not too far off in saying that. I hope that the Minister can confirm that Amendment 471 should be covered, at least partially, in all current religious education.

[The remainder of today’s proceedings will be published tomorrow.]

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will attempt to sum up this very diverse group—

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I apologise, that was my fault. I rise at the end of a very interesting group and look forward to the summing-up. One amendment has rather disappeared in the context of these important issues, but I strongly support it—Amendment 432B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Until she tabled this amendment, I had not looked very carefully at Clause 39.

Clause 39 sets out a whole long list of things which will constitute a material change in the nature of an independent educational institution. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to this amendment because that would generate a lot of pointless work. It is also a classic example of how, in a large Bill, things slip through on the nod, on auto drive, and have certainly slipped past MHCLG. It says that there will be a material change, among other things, if there is a change of the buildings occupied by the institution and made available for student use, which the noble Baroness’s amendment would strike.

Going a little further down the page, you discover that “building” means any

“building … part of a building, or … permanent outdoor structure”,

that the circumstances where a building is “occupied” may be just

“part of a school day”,

and that it is “for student use” if it will be “routinely used by students”. I do not expect the Minister to give me a clear reply on this immediately, but it strikes me that this means that the proverbial bicycle shed, if it was changed into a building in which students kept things in lockers, would constitute a material change for that institution. That is bonkers.

I draw your Lordships’ attention to this, even though it is in a group which is dealing with much more important matters. I would be very grateful for a reply on this from the Minister, because it is easily corrected. A Government who are genuinely committed to reducing regulatory burdens and to making planning processes more easily arrived at has let something slip in a way with which we are all too familiar.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Following what the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has just said, I want to speak to my Amendment 432 in this group and say that it is worth going that bit further than Amendment 434, which the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, is proposing. We are very much looking in the same direction. We want this to be an effective system.

I also lend my support to Amendment 433. On the practicality of understanding, the nomenclature changes all the time. In getting to know a child, you find things out about them, and a decent school immediately wants to do something to provide for that child. It should not have to go through layers of bureaucracy before doing that. As my noble friend said, there should be an immediate reaction and dealing with the consequences of it afterwards.

It is important to deal with the consequences. As my noble friend will remember, there was an excellent school called Stanbridge Earls School, which died because it started to take on children whose SEN it did not really understand. It did not make proper provision. The whole school collapsed as a result. It is really important that these things are properly done, but the immediate reaction to looking after one child should not get in the way of that process.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, second time lucky. This is a very diverse group of amendments and there are one or two that certainly caught my eye. First, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on change of use; that seems to be something the Government could quite easily make a small change on—I do not know how they would do it, but I do not think they would make many enemies if they accommodated that.

Schools have to be inspected, and if you have a consistent system doing that across the board it will be helpful to all. The issue of independent schools which are substandard has been raised, and my noble friend has raised it on many occasions. We should know what we are doing: if something is defined as a school and it is functioning as a school—well, if it walks like duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Let us make sure that they are all inspected to a similar standard. You will have to have flexibility in approach and some knowledge, because if they are doing different jobs, especially in the independent sector, different approaches will be needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, made a very good point about special educational needs. It is incredibly easy to miss co-occurring conditions, and then the one that comes to the fore gets labelled, although it may not be what is causing most of the problems. I say that as a dyslexic who has worked in the field for a long time; co-occurrence is almost the norm. People with dyspraxia are very often co-occurring, and the dyslexia is spotted first because they check your spelling first. They do not realise that you cannot write because you do not have the muscle memory, and your arm is breaking down in the physical movement, but it is going through. Something that allows a change to be made is sensible and practical and will save the child a great deal of distress—and the school too, although make sure you are dealing with the child first. The inspection regime has to have some consistency across it; otherwise, we will have a variety of competing groups with competing standards chasing their tails and blaming each other.

I hope the Minister can give us some assurance that we will get to a more coherent position in the future, but it has to be one which accepts that you are dealing with a variety of different animals.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke in this group, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for moving Amendment 427BA. The group considers amendments to the clauses relating to independent educational institutions. These clauses amend the Education and Skills Act 2008 and the regulatory regime which applies to independent schools. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, eloquently made clear, it is a diverse group, so I ask noble Lords to bear with me while I go through the diverse responses.

As noble Lords will be aware, academy schools are independent schools in law, which is why the regulatory regime in Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 applies to them. Among other things, this means that academy schools are regulated by the Independent School Standards guidance. Vital issues, such as safeguarding, are covered by these standards. Due to their state-funded status, academy schools differ from other independent schools by also being accountable to the Secretary of State via their contractual funding agreements. This long-standing arrangement is not intended to change. Instead, Clauses 36 to 44 are principally intended to change how privately funded schools are regulated.

Amendments 428, 429A and 427BA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and to which a number of noble Lords spoke, including the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, concern the relationship between the Education and Skills Act 2008 and academy trusts and their schools. They would mean either that valuable parts of the Education and Skills Act 2008 will no longer apply to academy schools or that these powers would need to be recreated via funding agreements. This would be expensive and time-consuming, with no immediate benefits.

Amendments 431A and 506D seek to require a review of the predicted impact of the powers relating to the suitability of proprietors and the requirement for proprietors to have regard to guidance. It is absolutely right that we can prevent unsuitable people from running schools. We already have a robust process in place, including requiring new academy trust chairs or trustees to complete a suitability check. Our approach to due diligence is already transparent. We do not expect the process to be significantly different or burdensome under any regulations made using this power, so a review is unnecessary.

To respond to the noble Baroness, the power to require independent school proprietors to have regard to guidance is limited to matters already covered by the independent educational institution standards in Section 94(1) of the Education and Skills Act 2008. It is right that academies, as publicly funded schools accountable to the Secretary of State, should be required to have regard to guidance issued.

I turn to Amendments 429 and 433, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood. If I have understood, the noble Lord’s concern is, first, that the Bill puts too great an imposition on the independent school sector and, secondly, that it represents an unnecessary fettering of its freedoms. On his first concern and Amendment 429, this new regulation-making power is limited to standards about matters already covered by Section 94(1) of the Education and Skills Act 2008. On his second concern and Amendment 433, the current requirement is that it is a material change to admit any pupils with special educational needs. This is too low a threshold and unnecessarily burdensome for institutions. Under Clause 39, it will matter to the Secretary of State whether a setting is a special institution and, if it is, what special educational needs it caters for. We do not intend to require a school to submit a material change based on the needs of individual pupils. Officials will test this further to ensure that the drafting does what is intended. I trust that this gives the noble Lord and others the assurance he is seeking.

Amendment 432, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and Amendments 432A and 434, tabled by my noble friend Lady Blackstone, make changes to the suite of inspection powers proposed to be given to Ofsted. To respond to my noble friend Lady Whitaker, the Bill contains measures to increase Ofsted’s powers when investigating only the specified relevant offences; for example, suspected unregistered and therefore illegal independent schools.

On Amendment 432, I agree with the noble Lord that unregistered independent schools are unsafe. Ofsted should have the necessary powers to investigate these settings and support criminal prosecutions against those responsible. That is why the Bill introduces a new suite of investigation powers available to inspectors in this situation. These achieve the same ends as the noble Lord’s amendment.

The amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Blackstone and spoken to by my noble friends Lady Morris and Lady Whitaker and the noble Lords, Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Nash, both seek to further strengthen the new investigatory regime. Amendment 432A introduces two new offences in this area. These may criminalise a landlord who is wholly unaware that their property is being used for illegal purposes, or a parent who innocently pitches in to support the running of a school which is not registered. The existing offence in this area of “conducting” is already broad and should capture and support our aim of prosecuting anyone running, controlling or managing an illegal school. Amendment 434 would allow inspectors to search any premises without a warrant. While I understand my noble friend’s concerns, this would be too intrusive. The Bill already strikes a good balance between allowing inspectors to act as they deem appropriate and introducing necessary safeguards which protect the rights of those subject to the investigation.

Amendments 432B and 433A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would make changes to Clause 39. It may help if I outline why the Government believe that Clause 39 is necessary. A setting seeking to register as a new private school is tested against the Independent School Standards. The noble Baroness asked whether schools would need to apply for material change if, for example, they added a bike shed. To be clear, we want the focus to be on buildings that are commonly used by pupils and, therefore, the places where risks to them might often arise. We have examples of settings that put pupils in entirely inappropriate buildings, including buildings with dangerous chemicals or exposed wiring, buildings that the public can enter freely and buildings in a state of disrepair.

In relation to the point on bike sheds, officials are testing the current drafting to ensure that its scope is not overly broad; and that the focus is on buildings that would be commonly used by pupils and are, therefore, the places where risks to them might arise most often.

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[Lord Nash (Con)]

I support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lady Spielman and support the sentiment behind them. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that we should not rush to this, because I think Ofsted inspectors will need some training on it. Many of them still do not really understand MATs, and I am a little worried about boasting too much about organisational structure; it is more the results that count and educational outcomes, the support from the centre, personal development, safeguarding, careers, enrichment et cetera. Of course, it is fairly easy to inspect for value for money by reference to comparable statistics, so that could certainly be done. In principle, I support this concept and welcome the very eloquent intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is said that, if you have all-party support on education in the House of Lords, you should probably run with it. We have it on this occasion.

There is a major part of the education system that we are not looking at: we are not inspecting the academy trusts properly. There are some successes there, and some that are not doing as well; that is inevitable, but it is an accepted part of the system now. We should be looking at what works and what does not.

My question to the Minister is as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked: if not now, then when? If we are going to do something along these lines, getting an idea of the structure and when it is coming in would be very helpful, because it is a very important part of the structure. Whether we accept that with a sigh or a smile does not matter; it is there and we should be inspecting it. I look forward to hearing the Government’s plans in this department very soon.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendments 436ZA and 436ZB in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I declare my interest as honorary president of COBIS which, as the noble Lord said, is a member of the British International Schools Safeguarding Coalition.

As the noble Lord set out, these amendments would close an important safeguarding loophole by extending the jurisdiction of the Teaching Regulation Agency to accept referrals of misconduct committed by UK-qualified teachers working overseas, and strengthening prohibition checks to ensure that individuals cannot exploit name changes to evade detection.

Prohibition checks are essential to identify individuals banned from teaching due to misconduct, safeguarding concerns or professional incompetence, and yet none of these misdemeanours committed at international schools overseas can be referred to the TRA. Indeed, as the noble Lord stressed, the current system does not even provide an option for them to report such concerns to the TRA online, creating a clear gap in the information that it holds. The loopholes in the current system mean that a teacher who is returning to the UK, for instance, and should have been referred to the TRA due to potentially serious child welfare issues committed overseas cannot be reported and so no prohibition order can be made. As a result, the individual would pass the statutory check, which schools rely on as evidence that an individual is safe to work with children. In practice, that could mean a teacher dismissed for misconduct abroad would have a clear result on their prohibition check and could subsequently be hired by a school in England that had no idea of their previous behaviour and allow the teacher to resume teaching.

I am sure the Minister agrees that this situation is clearly unsatisfactory and should be addressed. I hope she is able to accept these sensible amendments, which are supported by the Safeguarding Alliance and six UK Government-recognised British school associations and would undoubtedly help further strengthen the UK’s reputation as a global leader in safeguarding.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I say, briefly, that these seem to be incredibly sensible amendments, and I hope the Minister can accept them.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak only briefly to these amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. The misconduct regime covered in these clauses is clearly very important for the protection of schoolchildren and maintaining the highest standards both in the classroom and outside, in public perception. His Majesty’s loyal Opposition welcomes what is new in these clauses because it is right and proportionate that employers and authorities should have the ability to take action regardless of when or where an incident took place, and whether the individual was a teacher in the profession at that time.

We welcome online and independent educational settings being brought into scope in addition to the possibility of investigating a suspicion or an incident regardless of how it came to light. Ensuring that this regime applies fully and is not open to exploitation by those who seek to identify and use loopholes is critical, and the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, highlight this.

We hope that the Government will take this opportunity to assure the Committee that there will be no gaps in this section of the Bill. How will the Minister ensure that these eminently sensible amendments are addressed rigorously?

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[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as a secondary school teacher, I admit that I am conflicted by this group of amendments. Noble Lords have highlighted the benefits of getting industry experts to teach in schools. At our school, we use architects to teach the architecture programme. I recently went to a UTC that gets employers to come in and set projects for students. The employers then regularly come in to look at the projects so that the students get real-world, real-industry training. It is unrealistic to expect these employers to get teaching qualifications.

I am afraid that I cannot let Amendment 438 go. I have admired the optimism and creativity of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and I acknowledge the sterling work that the elective home-schooling community is doing. Like many in this Committee, I have undertaken formal teacher training. I have QTS, which does not appear to be the gold standard any more, I am afraid. I had one disastrous attempt at home-schooling during lockdown, when I tried to teach my primary school-aged daughter maths. She is still shouting at me even now.

To say that somebody who has experienced only home-schooling can go from that to teaching 32 boisterous students in the last period on a Friday, without any formal training, and impart any knowledge at all is optimistic at best. The noble Lord, who is sadly not in his place, unwittingly belittles two years of pretty intense training for mainstream teachers.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Sater, in saying that physical education is one of those things that we all decry and think somebody else should be doing. The fact of the matter is that there are certain physical skills that you need. In racquet sports, for example, you need to know how to move your feet, how to hold the racquet and so on; I say that in front of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, with, shall we say, a degree of fear. There are certain basic skills that you will need to get the best out of a sport and to see whether you have any potential for it—if you do not have them, you are not going to find out.

When it comes to how to integrate those abilities into PE lessons, you need some training and structure. If you turn around and say to your outside agency, “This is possible, so please make sure that it happens”, you are taking a step further forward. So a degree of knowledge is required.

We have just mentioned the fact that special educational needs are a factor. I have managed to make a couple of speeches without mentioning them, so I shall revert to the norm. If you have special educational needs but somebody who is trying to teach you does not understand what they are about, chances are you are going to fail. They may say, “Everybody take some notes”, but you may have one person who is dyspraxic so cannot do that easily and two people who are dyslexic so will not be able to read them back and will not get everything down in time. You have to have some degree of knowledge to reach them—and those are fairly commonly occurring conditions. You will need some training somewhere in this.

I do not say that the existing pathways are always there because, if they were, I would not be making this point in the first place. However, we need to have that degree of training—or at least the awareness to say, “Right, I don’t know how you do this. Can you defer and find me another pathway?” That would be very helpful. I look forward to exploring this matter, both in this Bill and in future Bills, to make sure that we get something in place that means that more teachers can become teachers of special educational needs—not just saying that they are, because more of the same does not work. What they have at the moment is failing them.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

I want to come in on this group to inject a note of pragmatism into the discussion. First, I observe that the current freedom does not seem to have created significant problems in practice. To ask that classic question, “What is the problem that the clause in the Bill is trying to solve?”

Secondly, it is absolutely right that there are excellent programmes—the noble Lord, Lord Knight, described them—to encourage people to move from instructor and teaching assistant roles into qualified teacher status. Those are excellent—they should exist and people should be encouraged, of course—but the pragmatic point is to think about all the people who might choose to be teachers but choose instead, for example, to go off and be tutors, lavishing their skills and expertise in a very small subject on children whose parents can afford to pay. They are then lost to the state system because they simply will not go down that path.

For that reason, I support the amendments put forward by my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew—as well as the pragmatic amendment proposed at the start of this group by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich—as a way of making sure that the potential impact of this clause is not the opposite of what I am sure the Government intend. It is absolutely right to want both to upskill teachers and to make sure that as much teaching as possible happens with qualified teachers, but it would be desperately sad if many subjects and a lot of the potential school experience for millions of children were diluted for that purity of principle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502D, which stands in my name. I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for his support. This amendment seeks to make financial education a mandatory part of the primary school curriculum from year 1. Why do we need it? Its aims are simple but important: to ensure that children begin to develop the knowledge and skills needed to understand and manage money from an early age.

In a world of increasing financial complexity, where our children encounter such things as targeted advertising, digital payments and online scams, often before they have even reached secondary school, it is more important than ever that financial literacy should not be left to chance. While financial education is a statutory part of the secondary school curriculum in England, it is not a requirement in primary schools. This creates a gap at precisely the stage when children begin forming lifelong money habits, and it stands in stark contrast to the rest of the United Kingdom, where such education is embedded in the national curriculum at an earlier age than in England.

The Money and Pensions Service has found that these habits develop as early as age seven, yet we wait until secondary school to introduce compulsory learning. Without embedding financial education from year 1, we risk missing the most formative opportunity to equip our children with the tools that they need to manage money with confidence and make good financial decisions throughout their lives.

According to a research report from Santander UK, at the beginning of this year, out of 2,000 pupils aged 18 to 21, only 26% reported receiving any financial education at school. Without a fundamental understanding of money management, our young people are increasingly turning to online sources for financial guidance and information, especially social media—that comes with its own risks—as they step into an age of financial independence. This cannot be right.

RedSTART Educate, a charity for primary school children that delivers financial education through progressive learning, which has now merged with Money Ready, is a long-standing campaigner for financial education to become statutory in the primary curriculum in England. It tells us that levels of financial literacy in the UK are low and falling, and highlights how awareness of debt, saving and investments needs to begin in primary schools. It is hard to believe, yet the data show, that from their programmes in primary schools 90% of children say that they now understand how budgeting can help them achieve goals and 80% of children can explain the difference between lending and giving. This is surely sufficiently compelling for financial literacy to be taught in primary schools; importantly, it will assist in dealing with the significant inequalities that exist across the country.

However, as the Social Market Foundation highlights, for financial education to make a difference, it is important to start young. Socioeconomic inequalities in financial understanding can be seen at the age of 11. According to Young Enterprise, which has called for financial education to be a core subject in primary school, only one in three primary-aged children receives any financial education, and where it is taught the provision is patchy. In other words, it is a postcode lottery.

This amendment is about establishing consistency and equity, and recognising that financial education should not depend on where a child lives or which school they attend. The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, has called on the Government, as a minimum, to place financial education on the national curriculum for primary schools within PSHE, and the APPG on Financial Education for Young People, of which I am a vice-chair, has recommended that it be embedded in the primary school curriculum.

We also cannot ignore the link between financial literacy and mental well-being. According to the Mental Health Foundation, money worries are the single biggest cause of stress and anxiety in the UK. The earlier we can equip children with the tools to understand and manage money, the better their long-term financial resilience and emotional health will be. I acknowledge that the national curriculum is under considerable pressure, but financial education cannot be seen as an optional extra. It is a vital life skill, essential for preparing our children to live fulfilling and stable lives in an increasingly complex financial world. That is why I believe this amendment would be a valuable addition to the Bill.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 441, which is tabled in my name. It is not the most elegant amendment that I have ever tabled, but it is designed to get the Government to set out their thinking on supporting those with special educational needs through the use of assistive technology.

I have a couple of obvious interests. The one I should declare is that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which makes adaptive technology for the workplace and education. More importantly—I show off how bad a dyslexic I am—I cannot function or deliver a letter without using it. Let us take English and somebody who is dyslexic. If you are bad enough, you will not achieve in English without having someone to dictate to unless you use assistive technology. You will fail at learning a language using the modern processes because the language-processing parts of your brain and your short-term memory do not work that way. You may have a choice of failing dramatically or just simply failing, but you are not going to achieve. Using assistive technology means that you can access that part of the curriculum, get through and possibly hand in work without having somebody else there. You have your independence.

I was trying to get the Government to set out their attitude towards this, which is a great way of addressing some of the problems of special educational needs. Get in early and get them away; they can maintain themselves and will be adaptive. If we could know about this in this part of the Bill, it would help us in the future. I hope that the Government are friendly to it.

There are all sorts of things attached to this. For instance, there are great things about not having mobile phones in school, but they are a very good platform on which to carry some of this technology. This may not be the only way forward—there may be other ways—but getting some idea of the Government’s thinking on this would probably help the forthcoming debates. It may not be a silver bullet, but it is certainly something that can help. I would be very grateful to hear what the Government’s attitude is.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 443 in my name. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for supporting it. The amendment would provide that an order or regulations made under or by virtue of any provision of the Bill that would amend primary legislation shall not apply to an academy school.

Academies’ proven success has been based on their freedom to depart from the national curriculum and to apply a curriculum tailored to their pupils’ needs. This Bill, however, is making a far-reaching change to the way that academies work, because the Government will, in future, be able to control the content and application of the national curriculum to academies. As I pointed out at Second Reading, this will be done not by primary legislation, as one would expect, but by secondary legislation that amends primary legislation. Yes, it is our old friend Henry VIII who lives on in these draconian powers, which raise real questions as regards compliance with the rule of law.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

To get the current situation on the record, I looked around for evidence and found a quote that is helpful in our deliberations on this issue. The quote is:

“I have serious concerns about the proposal to change the pathway for turning around failing schools. I know from bitter personal experience that any change to the status of a school can become highly political. The current system, in which failing schools automatically become academies, provides clarity and de-politicisation, and ensures a rapid transition. I fear that making that process discretionary would result in a large increase in judicial reviews”—


as has been mentioned—

“pressure on councils and prolonged uncertainty, which is in nobody’s interests”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/25; col. 902.]

I think that encapsulates the situation quite neatly. It is from Siobhain McDonagh, speaking on 8 January 2025. It can be found in column 902 of the relevant Hansard; I am providing the reference since my earlier remarks were challenged. So I will put them on the record as well: they came from the Spectator on 5 February. I believe that Siobhain McDonagh summarised the situation very fairly.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, very briefly, what draws me to say something here is Amendment 446. It is an interesting idea that is inspired by academies, if you like. When you have a successful maintained school and it is close, you take over and you have a nice successful model that is still in the maintained sector.

We have been saying, in effect, that we accept that academies are part of the landscape. The fact is that they are not the only successful part of the landscape, because a maintained school must have done reasonably well to remain a maintained school, so it has been successful. If we are interested in success—and not running up a political flag, whatever colour we choose—it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Let us also remember that some of the worst schools now will be academies because they have been failing and they come down, and some of the most successful ones are the ones that jumped ship because they had nice catchment areas and all was going well, so they became independent. That is one of the realities. So I hope that, when we look at how we improve schools that go wrong, we have other options because, if we dig into the academy system, we can find serial failure even there.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, I turn now to the amendments in group 10, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Bennett, and my noble friend Lord Blunkett. Although my noble friend is not here, I will respond to that amendment, given that it was addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman.

We have heard much today about the positive impact that high-quality trusts have made on the educational outcomes of children. This Government acknowledge these achievements—in fact, I have done so on every occasion that I have had the opportunity to, as has my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, as quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh.

What we are concerned about is how we can ensure improvement. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was right when he said that what we need here is a range of appropriate methods in order to ensure the quickest possible improvement. That is what the Government are aiming to do here. While many academies and trusts have driven improvement throughout the system, academisation is not necessarily a panacea. In fact, even when sponsored academies are excluded, pupil attainment in multi-academy trusts and maintained schools is similar.

Furthermore, the process of converting these schools can in itself be slow. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is right to say that that is because, in many cases, it is very complex. Nevertheless, that may well be a period in which the improvement that we would all want to see has not been able to be pushed. Around 40% of maintained schools identified for conversion take over a year to become academies—time during which pupils continue to experience underperformance. It is for those reasons that Clause 50 has been included in the Bill.

Autism Employment Review

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. His grandson has a good champion in him, and I hope he can understand that. The noble Lord makes a really important point. The employment rate for people with autism was 31%. If you compare that with disabled people across the board at 55%, it is not good. That shows the extent of the problem. We recognise that this is extremely serious. Nothing in the way this Government are going about this is trying in any way to minimise the challenges faced by people with autism.

I take the noble Lord’s point: autism is not a disease, but it is a different way of learning and looking. That is true of many neurodivergent conditions, and there are things that can be learned. We have pulled together a panel with different kinds of expertise, not to create some generalised view on what it feels like to not think in the way that some other people think but to enable us to look at all the evidence and work with employers to try to make a better place for everybody to go out there and work. I hope the noble Lord will be reassured by that.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister give us a further assurance that when the Government use the term “neurodivergence”, it is a broad spectrum, and you cannot help somebody with neurodivergence? You might be able to help somebody with dyslexia, autism or dyscalculia, for instance. I remind the House of my interests. There have to be specific help pathways for those conditions. If we start trying to be too general, we will end up helping no one.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for highlighting some of the conditions. It may reassure him to know that the academic panel we have pulled together is looking at a number of specific neurodivergent conditions. Those include ADHD, autism spectrum condition—with the acknowledgments made—dyslexia and dyscalculia. They also include DCD—developmental co-ordination disorder, also known as dyspraxia—and developmental language disorder, among other conditions. The noble Lord is absolutely right. The job of the panel is to review what is known and then to look at what can help. There will be some things, some steps employers could take, which may be of benefit to people with more than one condition, but there are some that will be quite specific, and we need to understand the evidence before we can make good recommendations.

Autism Employment: Buckland Review

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, obviously, having only just come into government, we have only just begun to look at this, but there are things in the report that the department was already doing that we can therefore develop. For example, the review pointed to the need to develop a digital service we have that is aimed at employers and supports employee health and disability. We are looking at other ways to make that more visible and easier to reach, because employers often want to engage people but need help in understanding the barriers so they can work out how to get better at this. We can start learning from that already, but we will move on to this as fast as we can.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, what are the Government doing about passporting when those identified in the education sector and training go into employment? If you have to reapply for support and help at any point, that puts on a further brake and, as this is not generally handled easily and quickly, it means the employer has extra costs. What are the Government doing in practical terms to address this? I remind the House of my declared interests.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I confess that I have learned a lot about this in the last week. There is a huge range of schemes and support out there. For example, DWP has specialist coaches—people who can support our work coaches and work with people with autism who want to move into jobs or develop them. We have schemes of all kinds, such as internship schemes for young people with autism and other disabilities. We have ways of working directly with people and supporting them. We have schemes with employers, and there is Access to Work, through which people can apply for support directly. DWP is trying to make all the work we do as tailored as possible to individuals, so that we can give people the support they need to get them into a job, keep it, progress in it and stay there.

People with Disabilities: Access to Services

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, follow that! The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, has set us a challenge by going across the entire panoply. That probably should be done, but we may need a debate about three times as long, or three different goes at it. Let us use this as our opening shot.

We have passed a law that we do not enact. Most people in this Chamber are veterans of various phases of this and its precursors. A good few years ago, I realised how long I had been here when it had been 20 years since we passed the initial DDA. I was one of the youngest people in the House then, so it was a great reminder of just how mortal I am. One theme has recurred again and again: we talk the talk without walking the walk.

The Government have reassured a certain group that they will have continued employment—those who make appeals to idiotic decisions by government, in this case for disability benefits, because there will be appeals to this. The Department of Health said that it would take care of mental health and that it would become as apparent as physical health, but has just said, “Oh no, there is far too much of it”. I cannot think of anything that would generate appeals and conflict more quickly. Congratulations—effectively, we have two departments at each other’s throats. All Governments have done this to an extent, and I hope that any new Government will be aware of this.

We also do not seem to have taken on board that many fixes can be made quite easily, because we are bound by convention. I must once again remind the House of my declared interests: I am dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association, and I am chairman of Microlink, a disability access company. When chatting through what could be done, I felt one of the easiest things would be to look at communication. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has just given us a good example of physical communication for one priority group. There is no consistent approach.

For communication of ideas, the dyslexic will always go to English. We have reached a point where we are worrying about passing an English exam. This is ridiculous. For over two decades, I have used voice-operated technology. It used to be an add-on to a decent computer—it had to be decent to handle it—and it is now standard on our operating systems. Most people do not know it is there, but it is: all you have to do is press a couple of buttons, or voice call them into action, and have it read back. But we still have a system where people repeatedly say that you have to pass a written English exam to get into certain places.

I have been looking around this Chamber, and most of us are using an old, established assistive technology—a pair of glasses. You have taken a manufactured substance, changed the lens and stuck it on the end of your nose. That is okay, but using a computer is not. There is a certain degree of absurdity built into the responses here. We and government agencies are still saying, “You’ve got to pass certain tests in a certain way”, and not, “Can you communicate information? Can you pass it on so that somebody knows what you are saying?” No, you have to write it down. We all know how absurd that is.

Let us face it: in the modern world, nobody writes anything much with a pen, other than a couple of lines, after you have left school. You do it all on a computer. I have asked this many times and have not heard a reply against it. Does anybody care if you have word-processed by talking or tapping a keyboard? There might be some weirdos somewhere who think that this is the essence of life, but I hope they are not in this Chamber today. Will we start addressing the practical problems and say that it does not matter as long as you can communicate? We could do this very easily if the Government were to lead on it.

The implications might be biggest for those with dyslexia. We have already heard about autism, and I shudder to think what the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who will follow me in this debate, would say about this, because the technology for those who have a visual impairment has been very well established for even longer than for those with dyslexia. Why do we not just ask: “Can you communicate properly?” Other groups would benefit from this as well, and this idiotic barrier to accessing training and information throughout the system would be removed. The Government have the capacity to say: “Yes, we will do this, and we will do it in the school system”. We can now say very easily, “You can learn through these methods”.

This is only in pockets: at university, it is perfectly accepted. If you suffered English GCSE and got through it at the fourth attempt, you are allowed to carry on. Even if you are very bad and do not stand any chance of getting through, you can get through. Only certain groups are affected. Are we going to start to remove this communication barrier for things such as training, accessing other types of activity, et cetera? Are we going to do this in a cohesive manner? Are we going to take a lead? This debate does not speak to one department: it speaks across government.

I hope that the Government will be in a position to give us a better steer. At the moment, we are creating artificial barriers that we can resolve easily. This is just one of them. Will the Government please give us some indication that they will do it? They have precedents and legal requirements saying that they should; they should say to people and employers that this communication problem does not matter. It is easily solved: all you have to do is press the button that is already on your computer and you will be able to work, with a bit of guidance about how it works. I am probably damaging Microlink’s client base here, but it is not rocket science. Making sure you do not get noise on the microphone is probably the first step, and then you have done it. It is as simple as making sure that you have a chair that does not give you backache—although people do not do that either.

Can the Minister say when the Government will start to intervene to tell people what is possible and that these things are easily solvable? If they do, they will remove a great deal of stress and some of the queues for benefits. That sort of positive action is long overdue. I hope that we will have a coherent attitude that gets through to people—not to those who dig around and wait in long queues for it, which is aggressively done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I think that it will go a very long way. We are looking seriously at getting the information out quickly—the link with HMRC is incredibly important here. We already get real-time information from HMRC anyway. We are asking the same question: what more can we do to be sure that those who do not let us know, for whatever reason, will do so? We also must not forget that the vast majority do let us know. This is a very important point. I believe that there will be a Question in the House next week on this issue, which I will be willing and ready to answer.

The subject of work was raised in particular by my noble friend Lord Shinkwin. This Government will always protect the most vulnerable, but we must also do everything possible to support those who can to move into work. I echo the Prime Minister’s speech at the Centre for Social Justice on 19 April, which I attended:

“The role of the welfare state should never be merely to provide financial support … but to help people overcome whatever barriers they might face to living an independent, fulfilling life”.


That is why we are supporting thousands more disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work through our £2.5 billion back to work plan. That includes exploring reforms to the fit-note process through the call for evidence—another theme raised today—and rolling out WorkWell, to bring together local health and employment support. Questions were raised today about who is best placed to make health assessments for work. I do not intend to go further on that, but we may well receive some information through the conversation and the PIP consultation on that subject.

From 2025, we will reform the work capability assessment to reflect new flexibilities in the labour market while maintaining protections for those with the most serious conditions. My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and others raised the disability employment gap. The Government have an ambitious programme of initiatives to support disabled people and people with health conditions. The disability employment rate was 52.9% in the first quarter of 2024, compared to 81.7% for non-disabled people. For disabled people, that is an increase of 0.1 percentage points. The disability employment gap was 28.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2024, a decrease of 0.6 percentage points on the year before.

We are also expanding access to mental health treatment, with nearly 400,000 additional places through NHS talking therapies, which I think the House will be well aware of. All this builds on existing support, such as Access to Work grants, our Disability Confident scheme and disability employment advisers in jobcentres.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Hughes, asked what the Government are doing to help those in poverty. There is a long answer I could give, but the short answer, which I think I have given in the House before, is that we are committed to supporting people on lower incomes and expect to spend around £303 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain in 2024-25, including around £138 billion on people of working age and their children. These statistics cover 2022-23, a year when inflation averaged 10% and benefits were uprated by 3.1%, in line with the CPI.

On the disabled, the latest statistics show that the number of people in families where someone is disabled and in absolute poverty—which is our preferred measure—fell by 100,000 between 2021-22 and 2022-23. The proportion of people in families where someone is disabled and in absolute poverty after housing costs has decreased by two percentage points since 2019-20, and the number of people in such families has increased slightly due to an increase in the number of people in families where someone is disabled.

Briefly, on education, which I think was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and others, in the special educational needs and disability sector our improvement plan will establish a single national system so that children can achieve good outcomes. We have increased high-needs revenue funding for children and young people with complex needs to cover £10.5 billion this year, up 60% over the last five years. The Law Commission is also undertaking a review of disabled children’s social care legislation to help clarify the law and to ensure that families of disabled children receive the support that they need. I hope that this may help address the remarks from the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

I will go further on the question of what the Government are doing to achieve greater national equality in the support offered to children. Our improvement plan outlines our commitment to establish a single national SEND system with a proposal to deliver national standards. National standards will improve mainstream education by setting standards for early and accurate identification of SEND need, and they will include clarifying the types of support that should be available in mainstream settings and who is responsible for securing the support. Finally, national standards will create a more consistent SEND system. That may not provide the whole answer, but I hope that helps.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Are we suggesting that there will be a consistent approach to those who are not taking on plans in the classroom? Much of the talk here is about the plan, which is incredibly expensive and slow, is appealed and then goes through. Will we get better support for those who have not had that official diagnosis? That is the real issue here.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I certainly always listen to the noble Lord. It will be for others to judge, but I very much hope so, and I take note of that.

Quickly on housing, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and briefly by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, thanks to the Government’s actions more disabled people have the support that they need to be able to live independently and safely. The Government have more than doubled the funding for the disabled facilities grant, from £220 million in 2015-16 to £625 million in this financial year. Our Renters (Reform) Bill, abolishing no-fault evictions and creating a new ombudsman for the private rented sector, will give disabled tenants more security and confidence to hold landlords accountable for reasonable adjustments. The Government have also proposed to mandate that all new homes will be built to a higher accessibility standard, providing greater independence and safety at home—which again was raised.

Health and Disability Reform

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I gently correct the right reverend Prelate, or give my view, which is that the current PIP system has served a purpose; that is a fair comment to make. However, as I said earlier, after 10 years—it was our Government who brought in PIP—now is the time to review it. To put this in perspective and explain why we are doing it now, I say that since 2015 the proportion of the caseload receiving the highest rate of PIP has increased from 25% to 36%, and 7% of working-age people in England and Wales now claim PIP or DLA, which is forecast to rise to 10% by 2028-29. Going back to 2022-23, the Government spent £15.7 billion on extra costs for disability benefits for people of working age in England and Wales, and the OBR has forecast that the cost will rise to £29.8 billion in nominal terms by 2028-29. On the right reverend Prelate’s question, we believe that now is the right time to do something. In fact, not doing something would be highly negligent. It covers everybody at all levels. I know he referred particularly to those who are the most vulnerable, and he was quite right.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this Statement should fill us with joy, but anyone familiar with the history of this issue will actually be worried. The assessment has just got a hell of a lot more complicated. In the past, people have been told that they cannot get their benefits, whatever they are called, because they can walk 10 yards—except they could do it one day but not the next, and it was a nightmare. The Government have just made a quantum leap in the complexity of conditions that they are dealing with. That is good, but unless they back it up with better support to make the assessment then they are guaranteeing failure. There is no real argument about that; the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, hinted at it, and others will back me up,

I suggest that something the Minister could do to make the Government’s life easier is to start passporting the identification of problems such as education in earlier life. For instance, there are education, health and care plans, and the disabled students’ allowance. If we cannot passport those into the Department for Work and Pensions, we are going to waste a huge amount of time and effort. Most of these things will have been tested in the courts, or with an assessment. What are we doing there? When we are making new assessments, are we investing in proper identification? That has been a chronic problem in this area. I hope that by now the Government have realised that and put some sort of plan in place.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I encourage the noble Lord, with his knowledge and experience, to input into the consultation, as I suspect he probably will. He will know that the consultation is limited in scope to PIP, which is open only to claimants aged 16 and over. That is quite broad, but it is payable regardless of whether you are in work, education or, as he spoke about, training. We are keen to hear from people from all walks of life and backgrounds, and encourage everyone, including students, to respond to the consultation.

I take note of the noble Lord’s point about passporting. I know about EHC plans from my previous brief. It is important that the student diaspora and those who represent it also input to the conversation.

As I said, we believe there may be better ways of supporting people in living independent and fulfilling lives. This could mean financial support being better targeted at people, including students, who have specific extra costs, but it could involve improved support of other kinds, such as for physical as well as mental health, leading to better outcomes.

Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, a debate like this is an odd one: by going through it, you suddenly realise the great reach of the Church of England. It is a big institution. It has done many things which are good and one or two things that you might disagree with, but you cannot deny its reach and power. Also, I feel that any report that gives a greater number of recommendations to itself to change than government probably deserves some attention from everybody. It has not said that its own house is correct—that gets it a hearing, at least from me, when it comes to the process.

On the emphasis on family, anybody who has done anything in the many fields in which the Church is involved knows it as a delivery structure or campaigning organisation. This report is mainly about children. I enjoyed the thrust of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the counter and parry by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. That was one of the little things I enjoyed in this debate. Fair enough: age was not mentioned, but it had been mentioned somewhere else.

I was talking about family and children. Children who have problems and get through them usually have a family behind them. They have an immediate support structure, which knows what is going on, recognises it and campaigns.

It is now time to declare my interests. I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and I am dyslexic. I am chairman of an assistive technology company. My experience of dealing with a group that struggles with the education system—the thing that gives them the building blocks to access other bits of life—is solidly wrapped up in the principle, and the rather black-humoured joke that I have used too often but is still relevant, that to be a successful disabled child, you need to choose your parents carefully. Once you have that support structure, you stand a chance in the future.

I have another aside on the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, about when we put gay marriage through the House. I was slightly disappointed by that process, because she managed it so well. I was expecting a good fight, but we did not really get one, so well done to her. I think my noble friend Lady Featherstone, who initiated that legislation in the Commons, feels the same way: “Oh, it’s gone through no problem”. It was a masterstroke of strategy. To use a rugby analogy, we had very good ball in space and used it well, so congratulations. I will explain that later; do not worry.

I return to the point that any family unit, no matter how it is constructed, is needed to support the child. When you do not get that interest and support, because the family is not functioning, it becomes massively difficult. We heard about the prison population. Most people in prisons are educational failures. I do not know the figures. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop—I need to get this right; I am sorry, I do not know whether the word is a “flock” or “pack” of bishops, but there are many. A “coven” was suggested from behind me, but that must be wrong. Anyway, every person with problems probably has not had a family who can do something for them.

What is needed here, and the Government talk about this and dance around the edges, is someone who can intervene early enough to support that family, parent or group, take it on and be successful. However, even with the best will in the world, some heads of families or carers are unable to do that, very often because they lack educational attainment and an understanding of the system, or because they are so stressed by other problems—poverty and bad housing—that they are not in a position to dig and find out. The day-to-day realities of keeping a roof over your head or putting enough food on the table overwhelm people. These things go together.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, has of course slipped out the minute I try to refer to him. He pointed out that, historically, people may not have been given what they are entitled to. The amount of unclaimed benefit has always astounded me, and it is usually because people do not know that they can get it or feel guilty about taking it. Let us face it: we do not give much away easily. If it is there, it is for a recognised reason. Making sure that it is attainable will help the family and give them the background to create.

The second thing I would like to do—to go totally towards my own end of the sandpit when it comes to education, namely special educational needs—is make sure that it is not the parents’ job to get a diagnosis, or to campaign to get a plan, and that it is the school’s job to do more. You do that by making sure there is better awareness, and the capacity to handle different learning patterns caused by conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD and autism, within the mainstream school—because they are there. We have 80% non-recognition of dyslexia in certain age groups—that is just one condition. They usually hunt in packs, by the way; ADHD often accompanies dyslexia and autism, and the rest.

Often, we are not talking about those people with the most obvious need; we are talking about the person who is failing consistently, or just failing, or just passing, or passing with such a huge effort of extra concentration that they will not maintain it for very long but will jump out early. I am due to host a meeting of the British dyslexia police association, which has dozens of examples of people who have gone through exactly that journey. That is our police force; think how many did not make it—basically, their client base. If we are going to do this, we must look at the structure and the help; we must make sure that this group, who are basically the failures, get alternative provision within education.

The Government recently said they accept that virtually everybody in this growing group—which has grown over the years, and I will give noble Lords my 30-minute diatribe on why academisation was not any good at some other point—has a special educational need, most of them unidentified. They must now have extra capacity to identify.

If you are going to allow families to have their best option, and get the best results out of them, do not expect them all to be wonderful tiger parents. Allow them to be an ordinary parent doing their best job. Make sure that the rest of the system comes in and helps. If you expect people to be wonderful, occasionally the lucky and the brilliant will get through, but that is the definition of a failed system. Can the Minister give some hint as to how a better integrated policy for taking this bit of pressure off parents will be developed? How are we going to make sure that you do not have to find a £600 assessment, and pay for it yourself, to get a child identified for the right help?

I have already gone on slightly longer than I had hoped to, so I will finish on this. A recent piece of work from the LSE, by Dr Tammy Campbell, points out that, in more deprived areas, more people are identified as having educational problems but far fewer as having specific problems. With all of the conditions I have talked about, you do not need to work harder; you need to work smarter, because your brain is not accepting information in the way others do, thus it cannot give it out. Dyslexia, autism, dyspraxia and ADHD—all of them—share this. They are not the same, but they are all there. What development has been taken to take this strain off families and carers? It ties in with everything else and is part of the picture.

At the moment there is still some truth in the stereotype that dyslexia, for instance, is a middle-class disease. Little Johnny, who is a complete swine in the classroom—we can use stronger language if we like—has got ADHD if he is middle class but, if he comes from a more traditional working-class background or a non-exam-passing one, he is just a swine. The girl who does not get recognised because her coping strategy is to disappear in the middle of the class does not get any help at all. What are the Government doing to make sure that the entire sector is better at recognising this group? Writing off 20% of our population in the educational process under normal circumstances is surely something that should have gone a long time ago.

Health and Disability White Paper

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

It will be, but, as I mentioned to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we have a number of matters to work through, which is why I have said that it will take time. Sanctions are part of this: for example, in November 2022, the universal credit sanction rate was 6.51%. Sanctions underpin conditionality and are a key part of a fair and effective welfare system, so it is right that a system is in place to encourage claimants to take reasonable steps to prepare for and move into work. We need to keep our eye on this.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is an odd White Paper because it misses out a whole chunk of the system: the link between education and benefits. The Government have just produced a paper that says they are going to do much better at identifying special educational needs. Here, I should remind the House of my interests. Reference is made on page 12 to all the neurodiverse groups. You would expect these to manifest in the education process. How are they going to go through? Are the Government requiring an education and healthcare plan? Will there be some other form of identification? How is this to be done? This is a long-standing problem that means assessors and lawyers make money. Can the Government tell me how they will disappoint these groups?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that this is another area we need to focus on, particularly those with neurodiversity issues or, indeed, autism. We have made progress in seeing more disabled people in employment but, as he will know, progress is not even. Groups such as autistic people are still showing very low employment rates—for example, only around 26% of working-age autistic people are in employment—so there is much work to do. This will be a factor in what we look at over the next few months and years as part of these new initiatives.