Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, there are around 35 state boarding schools in the country, but there are also a number of private boarding schools that are ready to provide support, which is why I mentioned the Royal SpringBoard scholarships and bursaries that are available. I completely accept the noble Lord’s point—that people need to be kept, wherever possible, near their homes—but we need flexibility. We must not make the perfect the enemy of the good. If there is a good boarding school place that is reasonably accessible to the child’s home, but more importantly to the foster carer or kinship carer, then that is what matters. But I take onboard what the noble Lord said.

In her summing-up of Amendment 82, the Minister spoke about stability of setting, and she was very right. The Norfolk study showed that there was a very strong correlation between improvements in those children’s well-being and the length of tenure. The study showed that three years of continuity made a tremendous difference. I hope the Minister will consider this amendment.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, before speaking to my Amendment 129, to which the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Storey have added their names, I first add my very strong support for Amendment 144 by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I am sorry that I did not manage to add my name to it; it deals with such an important issue.

I was shocked to read a report by the Children’s Commissioner, which said that last September, there were 775 children in unregistered homes, including children under the age of 10, children who had spent over two years in those homes and children in entirely inappropriate unregistered settings such as caravans. Staggeringly, the average cost was over £1,500 a day, with an estimated total annual cost to local authorities of over £400 million. As the Children’s Commissioner said, and I very much agree with her, the use of these homes is a national scandal. Vulnerable children are being failed. We would not allow it for our own children, and we simply should not allow it for those for whom the state is corporate parent. Therefore, I very strongly support phasing out unregistered accommodation.

My Amendment 129 is closely linked to the discussion we had on the first group about children being placed far from home. It would amend

“the sufficiency duty to prevent children being moved far away from home”

when that is not in their best interests. We heard a lot of the arguments in the previous group, and I will pull out a few specifics.

In recent years, there has been a marked and shocking rise in the number of children in care who are moved far away from their support networks and communities. Last year, more than a fifth of all children in care were living more than 20 miles away from home. That might not sound far but, frankly, that is a long way from family and local support networks. In addition, more than 3,000 children were living more than 100 miles from home—that is 4% of all children in care—and more than 800 children under the care of English local authorities were living in Scotland and Wales. Although I accept that there may be legitimate reasons why children in care are moved far from home—safeguarding, preventing them being exploited or harmed, or their being moved to wider family networks—far too often it is simply because of a lack of appropriate local options.

As highlighted by the charity Become in its Gone Too Far campaign, being moved far from their family, friends and schools can have a significant and long-term adverse impact on children’s relationships, mental health, well-being, sense of identity et cetera—the sort of things we discussed in our last session on relationships.

Clearly, local authorities across the country have faced a number of challenges recently—that is why we have just had the discussion about regional care co-operatives —particularly in ensuring that there are the right number and type of homes in their local area to meet the needs of children under their care. The current sufficiency duty is not fit for purpose, and there is a lack of accountability and oversight regarding the extent to which sufficiency is being fulfilled.

That is the reason for tabling this important amendment, which seeks to strengthen the sufficiency duty by requiring local authorities to plan, commission and deliver provision and to take “all reasonable steps” to ensure that children in care remain living within or near to the local authority. The amendment builds on recent reforms by the Welsh Government, and we would very much benefit from taking it forward.

UK Cash Network

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s consultation set out proposals for the Financial Conduct Authority to become the lead regulator for oversight of the retail cash system, including having responsibility for monitoring and enforcing new legislation and cash access requirements. In adopting this approach, the Government intend that the Payment Systems Regulator and the Bank of England continue with their existing functions with regards to cash. Co-ordinated actions by the FCA and PSR on cash as part of the Covid response have shown that joint working between the regulators at both strategic and operational levels is working.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, following on from the questions from the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Tunnicliffe, will the Government commit to giving the Financial Conduct Authority responsibility to start tracking trends in cash acceptance levels among UK businesses to help understand what action might be required to prevent that problem worsening? Separate from the legislation—it will be great to get a timetable for when it will be introduced—what specific measures will the Government take to ensure that people, particularly those who rely on cash, can continue to use cash to pay for goods and services?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, as part of the FCA’s role in monitoring and enforcing cash access, the Government consider that it should be given responsibility for ensuring that access points provide reasonable access. In terms of recent activity, since the passing of the Financial Services Act, retailers now have the ability to offer cashback without purchase—I think it was from 29 June—and we are already seeing some take-up of that. Indeed, PayPoint, which operates terminals in several thousand outlets across the country, has committed to provide that extension to its service.

Social Mobility: Regional Attainment Gap

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and declare an interest as co-chair of the APPG on Social Mobility.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the report, and its focus on the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. The gap has narrowed by around 9.5% since 2011. We continue to prioritise social mobility by investing on average £2.4 billion a year in the pupil premium to support the most disadvantaged pupils. We are targeting extra support on areas facing low educational outcomes, particularly through the opportunity area and Opportunity North East programmes.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. The APPG report paints a stark picture of the regional attainment gap between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent counterparts, and shows how areas of low social mobility will worsen unless action is taken. The report recommends redesigning the pupil premium as a social mobility premium, which schools could use to spend on extra pay or other forms of support for teachers in deprived areas. What steps are the Government going to take in these areas?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I first acknowledge the tireless work that the noble Baroness does in this incredibly important area of social mobility. To answer her specific question, the funding provided through the pupil premium means that there is funding available to support local priorities such as recruitment, retention and development of teachers. Further to this, we recently published the teacher recruitment and retention strategy, which reiterates our ambition to shift incentives so that more good teachers work in schools with more disadvantaged intakes.

Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, since the coalition and this Government took office, we have focused on the more disadvantaged families. For example, the troubled families programme is budgeted to spend £920 million helping nearly 290,000 families in most need. What is interesting is that the number of children defined as children in need has declined by 14% after they have been involved in this programme for 12 months.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

Will the Minister say what specific steps the Government propose to take to support the mental health and well-being of children affected by high-conflict parental separation, particularly those who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence and abuse?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, this Government have committed £1.4 billion to the mental health of families and children. We know that this is extremely important. Parental conflict is three times more likely to occur in poorer families than in those who are better off. This is why we are focusing on this area.

Children: Mental Health Assessments

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the pilots were delayed by the general election but will start next year. Delay has enabled the design to effectively address the problems identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the Education Select Committee. In particular, we have taken forward recommendations of the expert working group on the mental health of children in care, which the Government commissioned to look at how to improve mental health and well-being support for looked-after children. We are currently identifying an organisation to support implementation.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer and will not dwell on my disappointment that it has taken so long to get the pilots off the ground. It will now be important to understand how these pilots will fit with the new trailblazers announced in the Green Paper to trial new mental health support teams working with schools. Does the Minister agree with me that it would make sense for at least one area to trial both the new children-in-care assessment pilots and the new mental health support teams to see how they best fit together?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we will work with our delivery partner to identify pilot sites, and there will be an up-front commitment to help meet any needs that are identified during the assessment process. One advantage of the delay is that we now have the mental health Green Paper, and we are trying to dovetail as much of the work from that into these pilots as we can.

Social Mobility Commission

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I have already complimented Mr Milburn on the great work that he has done with his commissioners over the last five years. We are determined to keep the Social Mobility Commission. If the Government were not interested in social mobility then perhaps we could do as the noble Lord suggests and shut it down, but that is not the intention. We want a strong and vocal commission to hold us to account. I know we fully intend to appoint a new board in the next few months.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, the Social Mobility Commission’s report State of the Nation 2017, published earlier this month, paints a very stark picture of a country with many deep divisions—economic, social and geographical— and makes a heartfelt plea for the Government to publish an overall strategy for tackling them as well as a detailed action plan to respond to the specific recommendations in the report, a number of which are aimed directly at the Government. When do the Government intend to respond to the report?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I can confirm that we will be publishing a social mobility action plan shortly; I cannot give an exact date but it will be soon. It might also be worth mentioning some of the achievements of the last seven years because I think people can get rather downhearted by the whole issue of social mobility. It is important to remember that today we have 3 million more people in work; 950,000 fewer workless households; 600,000 fewer people in absolute poverty; 100,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty; and 300,000 fewer working-age adults in absolute poverty. Lastly, 600,000 fewer children are living in workless families than in 2010.