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.

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.

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[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.

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.

Employment: Disabled People

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We have a disability action plan, but it is separate from the noble Baroness’s point about the national disability strategy. We are disappointed by, and strongly disagree with, the High Court’s finding that that strategy was unlawful; as the noble Baroness may know, the Secretary of State has been granted permission to appeal the court’s declaration. In order to ensure compliance with the court’s declaration, we are obliged to pause a limited number of policies referred to in the strategy or directly connected with it, which is a disappointment.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in this field as set out in the register. What are the Government doing to make sure that businesses, particularly small ones, know that, if they employ a disabled people, they have somebody who is less likely to take time off work and less likely to change jobs frequently—both those things are proven—than a non-disabled person? This sort of information would certainly help to break down perceptual barriers.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Indeed, and this is very much a matter for Jobcentre Plus. Further training is being given to job coaches in jobcentres. It is very important that those with health conditions or disabilities receive the support and advice that they need to move into or to stay in employment.

Supporting Disadvantaged Families

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Of course we agree completely that children cannot protect themselves, and we must all do our part to protect them. Local government’s role is important, and we urge all partners in the communities that work with their local authorities, and the community groups with which they have relationships, to work together to identify those they know who really need this support. I undertake to write to the noble Baroness, as she requests, about the term “vulnerable”. As for those with no recourse to public funds, local authorities can, and already do, use their judgment to assess what support they may lawfully give to each person on an individual basis, taking into account their needs and circumstances. That includes providing a basic safety net option to individuals regardless of their immigration status, if there is a genuine care need that does not arise solely from destitution—for example, if there are community care needs or serious health problems—and there is a risk to a child’s well-being.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is odd when we talk about child poverty as though it has happened with the pandemic. Food poverty during the holidays has been with us for a long time. In that context, it is only fair to ask what the Government’s long-terms plans are. They must have seen this coming for a long time. What are they going to do to make sure that the whole of the school holidays—not just six weeks—are covered? Will they make sure that in future they have a coherent plan to ensure that children get through the whole period with enough nourishment, so that they are not in a state of low nutrition, meaning that they cannot learn for a few weeks when they get back to school? Marcus Rashford did a wonderful job. It is appalling that the Government had to be told by him what to do and that they did not listen to their own Back-Benchers.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

On a long-term plan, the only commitment that I can make today on behalf of the Government is the one in the announcement. That is the straight answer on that point. I note the noble Lord’s observations in the latter part of his contribution and just say that we have listened to Marcus Rashford and others, piloted the initiative, and responded accordingly.