Pupil Mental Health, Well-being and Development

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for her stimulating and challenging speech introducing this interesting debate. I also thank the House Library and the several organisations that have provided most helpful briefings, all pointing, regrettably, to the increasing mental problems among children and young people. I will not repeat the catalogue of problems that many others have covered.

I was going to say that one issue that had not been covered—although the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, now has—relates to diet and its impact on children’s and young people’s mental well-being. I am sure the Minister is not surprised that I am raising this again. The significant issue, on which action still needs to be taken, is the quality of school meals. My concern, and that of many others, is that one of the factors that greatly influences the conduct of children is sugar and the high incidence of it now. In particular, in the view of many people, there is an overly high incidence of sugar in school meals, which is why some of us have been pressing, for quite some time, for the long-overdue review of the regulations relating to school meals to be undertaken. The last time I raised this, the Minister said she would take it back to her department, and I am sure she has done that. As she returns today from her department, I wonder whether she is bringing some good news for us: that we will get a review—the last one took place in 2014—under way in 2024.

If the Minister is not in a position to do that, I can tell her that the new special Select Committee that has been established in the House to look at diet and obesity met this morning for the fourth time, to hear Henry Dimbleby give evidence. He of course was the former UK government tsar at Defra, brought in by the Government to help them with their problems with diet, farming-related issues, food generally and obesity. He resigned, somewhat disgusted with the Government’s unwillingness to implement a number of the recommendations that he has been pressing. Some of those related to children, school meals and the growth of obesity among children.

It is not only child obesity that is worrying us now. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned—the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has spoken frequently on this—we now see an increasing number of children with mental health problems relating to eating disorders. There is considerable growth in that area, which is of big concern and needs addressing. What is causing the growth in mental health problems? Do we have more nowadays than previously? That is debatable.

The causes—there are a variety—are debatable too but, without a doubt, many of us would agree that social media had quite a significant impact. This relates back to food, body image, appearance, bullying and how younger people relate to each other on social media, which is leading to mental health problems. I believe that, behind an awful lot of the mental health problems that we encounter with children, there is a fear of what they are encountering in life—and a fear of climate change, which is growing and worrying children. We have to do all we can to try to address that.

There is a poverty of food in many areas in the country, but I believe too that we have a poverty of spirit. This goes back to resilience and self-reliance, but it is an important factor that we have to see whether we are doing enough in schools to develop that self-reliance. I was very heartened to hear of the work that the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, described that she is undertaking, and we look forward to the results of the experimentation that is taking place in the north-east. I hope that it is successful.

To move away from that issue, I quickly recall that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, helped Tony Blair and helped significantly with regard to mental health by persuading the Government to introduce talking therapies. Some 22,000 people are now employed on that for adults. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, has done some recent work on addiction, and maybe he should do some work with children, too. We should look to see whether we can have a greater expansion at school levels. I leave it now to my good friend and colleague to speak with more authority about mental health than I can.