School Meals: Funding

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government obviously look at what happens in relation to these issues across all the devolved Administrations. We have a very targeted approach to supporting children during the holidays which addresses the longer school holidays when the pressure on families is greatest.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Given that we now have the world-leading position of having the earliest onset of type 2 diabetes among our children, leading all countries in the world, whether you are having a free meal or not, what is the Government going to do about the quality of the meals being served, which are abysmal?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be interested if the noble Lord has specific examples of where he thinks schools are serving abysmal meals. I would be delighted if he shared that with the department, because the regulations are very clear and specific on quality. There is an element of flexibility for schools as to how they implement that, but the responsibility is clear, and my understanding is that it is being upheld.

Multi-academy Trusts

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, my noble friend is entirely correct. A few dozen trusts have not performed as well as they should have on governance, but we have that in any large organisation—we now have over 1 million adults in the academies sector, and things go wrong. However, we have seen tremendous progress. We now have over half a million children in schools that were previously failing local authority schools and are now rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. According to last year’s Progress 8 scores, converter academies have outperformed their comparable local authority schools on every category and type of child—white, mixed, Asian, black, Chinese, SEND pupils and those in receipt of SEND support.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, following on from the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, which I presume relates to the length that people continue in post, could the Minister say—I am sure he wants to continue to improve governance—whether he has looked at the Cadbury principles and seen whether they could be applied in certain areas of trusts?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

To reassure the noble Lord, an academy trust is scrutinised not only by the Department for Education; we are co-regulators with the Charity Commission and, when a person becomes a trustee of a trust, he or she is also a director, as in company legislation. We expect the highest levels of probity, and we act when that does not happen.

Education: Industrial Strategy

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, for that to happen, we need to make sure that we have apprenticeship standards for the creative industries. A great deal of work is going on there and the number of apprenticeships in creative subjects is increasing as we speak.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister say whether—notwithstanding all the money that he describes the Government pumping into further education—he is really content with the present funding arrangement, as posed in the question from the noble Baroness on the Back Benches?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am concerned about funding for further education. I believe that it needs to be a priority in the spending review; I have said that publicly, as recently as last week at the Wellington Festival of Education. We need to put more emphasis on that and to ensure that we are developing the skills base we need for the next generation.

Young People

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top for introducing this excellent debate with such an outstanding speech, and I am grateful to other speakers. I shall speak about obesity and its relationship with mental health. Tackling childhood obesity is one of the biggest challenges that face us and, in turn, young people.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health cites obesity as one of the top three challenges facing young people. The statistics are startling. Data from the national weighing programme shows that children aged 10 to 11 are now the heaviest they have been since recording started. Government figures also show that almost one in five children are obese when they start primary school, which rises to one in three by the time they start secondary school at age 11. These figures come from the national child measurement programme, which measures children’s height and weight at the ages of four and 11. Between the ages of 12 and 15, the statistics are not as strong but seem to indicate that, if we extrapolate, they are probably even heavier. The most recent return from the national health survey shows a spike among those aged between 12 and 16, which is very worrying.

We are all aware of the risks from obesity—chronic, life-limiting conditions such as diabetes—but healthcare professionals are also seeing an increase in bullying, low self-esteem and mental health issues among overweight and obese children. That should be of grave concern to us. Mental health is a big issue, as others have described, and I shall not recite or repeat the statistics given to us so far. An emerging point that we need to address which we are aware of based on evidence is that half of adult mental health problems start before the age of 14.

This brings me to the three recommendations made in the Green Paper on child and adolescent mental health published in December 2017. The first was to,

“identify a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health to oversee the approach to mental health and wellbeing”,

in schools. The recommendation went on:

“This link will provide rapid advice, consultation and signposting”.


The second was to,

“fund new Mental Health Support Teams, supervised by NHS children and young people’s mental health staff, to provide specific extra capacity for early intervention and ongoing help”,

in schools. The suggestion in the Green Paper was that this would be rolled out by 2025, stating that all areas would get training to help identify and train a designated senior lead for mental health. I should like to know whether the senior lead for mental health will assist in the campaign to fight childhood obesity. Will they be given specific training in this area? Will they be able to signpost children and their families to appropriate resources? Given the increasing problems we have with mental health, will the Government consider increasing the programme with a faster rollout aiming for an earlier date in 2025?

I recognise that these issues cross departmental boundaries and I normally speak on health topics, but increasingly we find that schools have been drawn into this and hear from teaching professionals that they are unhappy that they are required to carry additional burdens which they believe go beyond their remit. I should welcome a comment from the Minister on that, given that he now has substantial responsibilities. Recently, I read the report from the Chief Inspector of Schools, who felt that the balance was going way beyond what should be expected of professionals in school, and that it should revert to where it should properly be dealt with: with parents. Can he give a view on what she had to say and how we can resolve the issue, as the chief inspector believes that responsibility should not rest in schools?

School Milk

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I can. The UK dairy industry is enormously important to us. We are working with it to encourage greater resilience in the face of global market volatility. There are examples, with the introduction of extended tax averaging, enabling many farmers to smooth their tax bills over a five-year period.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that free milk will still be available post-2019?

[Lord Nash]

I do not think that I can look that far ahead, but I would be surprised if it was not.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the new Health Ministers, the noble Lord, Lord Prior, and, in her absence, the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm. I wish them well. I wish them good health and that they will be able to improve the health of the nation in their new roles. I hope that they will seek to apply to themselves and, in particular, to their senior officials the statutory duty of candour for the NHS which the Secretary of State introduced in the previous Parliament.

Notwithstanding that, and the unsuccessful attempts of some of us parliamentarians to gain public access to the official activities of former Health Minister Andrew Lansley in the run-up to the Health and Social Care Act 2012, it was pleasing to hear in the Recess that the High Court had ruled that there should after all be disclosure. In doing so, Mr Justice Charles said that the two senior civil servants were “unimpressive” witnesses and concluded that their evidence had fallen,

“way below the standards that the public and the FTT are entitled to expect of government departments and senior civil servants in advancing public interest arguments”.

So if the Minister cannot answer me this evening, I would be grateful if he would subsequently write to tell me whether the Government have decided to submit a further appeal or are willing to accept the judgment and go public. I hope that they will go public; then we can put this behind us and it will be the end of the episode. In future, though, when we talk about candour it should apply right across the board, not just to civil servants but to government Ministers. Looking at the noble Lord, Lord Prior, I am sure that he will endeavour to ensure that.

Having got that off my chest, I welcome the Government’s commitment in the gracious Speech to implement the National Health Service’s own five-year plan. My health interest is mainly in public health policy, well-being and lifestyle. I focus particularly, as many noble Lords will know, on the health problems arising from alcohol abuse. The NHS five-year plan calls for,

“a radical upgrade in prevention and public health”,

and specifically calls for,

“hard-hitting national action on obesity, smoking and alcohol”.

More recently, the NHS CEO, Simon Stevens, has stated that obesity is now becoming a bigger killer than smoking. That must be of huge concern to all of us, particularly to the Government as they continue to struggle to get public spending and the deficit under control. It is true that the coalition made some progress on those items, but in one area, obesity—and they could not point to the Labour Government prior to them failing—they failed badly. All the records indicate that during the period of the coalition being in power, the waists and weight of the nation grew, and obesity expanded. That needs to be reversed. It is now one of the major health issues facing us, and over the course of the coming months I will be looking to see just what the Government intend to do to address this problem.

I make the point that the problem arises not solely from food, as many people seem to believe, or from a lack of exercise, but also from drinking alcohol. Alcohol is a significant but generally unrecognised and unknown contributor to obesity. Most alcoholic drinks contain sugar, some in very large amounts indeed. A relatively small number of producers and distributors show calories on their product labels, but most do not—and few, if any, show the sugar content. Noble Lords may think that this is a relatively minor or indeed trivial issue but I do not; I believe that it is one of several factors on which action needs to be taken to start to improve the nation’s health, particularly with regard to obesity.

It worries me that so far the Government have not been able to get any movement on this front. I have been chasing them on it for five years. We have had some retailers making changes voluntarily, but the overwhelming bulk of them still do not show anything in this area. It worries me that if the Government cannot resolve relatively minor or trivial issues, as some people refer to them, what chance is there that they will face up to the really tough decisions that they will have to take in respect of obesity, given their failure to move on the smaller topics?

I shall give the House an example of where the Government ran away from taking a tough decision in the last Parliament: minimum unit pricing. The drinks industry itself, however, knows that pricing works. That is why it lobbied the Chancellor so aggressively before the last Budget, a couple of months ago. The industry lobbied for a freeze or reduction in excise duties and won—and it is very pleased indeed with the out-turn from that, because it means that it will be able to maintain or increase its market share and sales.

However, when it comes to the Government introducing minimum unit pricing to reduce the sale of alcohol, the industry pretends not to be convinced of the case and the evidence that it would work. On the one hand we have the industry itself, which knows that it works, and on the other hand the Government are still unconvinced. I put it to the Minister that he needs to address this topic early on. Alcohol affects people’s health in a whole range of areas, as well as obesity. I am patron of the British Liver Trust, and we have seen in recent years that liver disease and deaths caused by it have been increasing, and there is a whole range of other topics where health is affected by alcohol. However, this evening I am speaking in particular about our major problem of obesity.

Given that the five-year plan and the CEO of the NHS have been so specific about the urgent need to tackle this issue, and that past policies—certainly over the last five years—have failed, can the Minister say when he will come to the public and to the House to set out the programme that now needs to be implemented, to truly start to tackle the fundamental problems that arise which relate to obesity, certainly on the drinks side, but also in other areas, including food? We need to see a truly hard-hitting programme put in place that we can all come together around, to make sure that we can reduce the number of deaths that are likely to arise in the future, and in turn reduce the costs that arise for the National Health Service.

Schools: Substance Abuse Education

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend that parents have a role to play. We have our CANparent trials. One thing that is very important for parents to instil into their children is a sense of routine, particularly in the evenings and late at night.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Is the noble Lord aware that, according to the latest figures, the number of young people presenting with alcohol problems at A&E has increased? Is he also aware—and this is hearsay—that people who do talks at schools say that when they make approaches to speak on drugs, alcohol and other mental health problems, they often get a warmer reception and greater welcome in the private sector than at state schools, where their approaches do not get a similar response?

[Lord Nash]

It is true that figures show that alcohol abuse among young people of school age is down, but that may not be the case for those in their late teens or early 20s. On the noble Lord’s point about the private sector, we are trying to make sure that all state schools have an active extracurricular programme so that these kinds of extracurricular courses are well attended.

Schools: Free Schools

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I take note of the noble Lord’s point. I think it is very unlikely that my two noble friends to whom he referred would ever get prematurely overexcited. However, I note the point that he makes on timing.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

The Minister said that if a free school fails the Government will take swift and decisive action. Can he tell the House what that would be?

[Lord Nash]

Noble Lords will know that we have closed one and a half free schools with a total of 200 pupils and we have created so far 150,000 new free school places, and so this needs to be seen in that context. We have also brought other management into one particular free school.

School Pupils: English Speakers

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right that teaching assistants can play a vital role, particularly in this area. As we have discussed, the use of teaching assistants can sometimes not be done well—but, properly used, they are vital. We believe that it is for the head teachers to decide how they employ teaching assistants. It is entirely a matter for them.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

The House will be grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for the statistics that he has given us. More importantly, what is the estimate of the number of children who are now going to school who cannot eat properly, have not been toilet trained properly and cannot cope with healthy foods by comparison with what they are accustomed to eating? What are the Government doing to help parents to train those children to make sure that they have a better standard and to stop the closure of the Sure Start centres, which were aimed at trying to prevent that difficulty?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord is quite right that we unfortunately see an increasing number of pupils entering primary school with very challenging social skills. Primary teachers and assistants have to spend several terms socialising them. Meals are very important, which is why we have introduced compulsory meals. On early years training, in fact we have invested substantially in early years and continue to support childminding.

Young People: Parenthood

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I do not know how many schools offer that and I do not know how easy it would be to find out, but I will certainly ask the question. I am aware of how much work is being done in primary and secondary schools and the way in which many schools, particularly primary schools, are finding ways of bringing parents into schools and educating them at the same time as the children. I agree with him on the importance of schools developing ways of encouraging that.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, given the changes in the benefits regime and the ideas being floated over the past few days about further changes that will affect in particular young people and their lifestyles, and given what the Minister has already said about not moving on parenting advice, will he say whether there is any intention to draw these changes to the attention of young people? Will he also say whether some thought might be given to giving some well placed advice on servicing tax liabilities and responsibilities at some point, too?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, it seems to me that all those matters could be considered and taught within the existing PSHE framework in schools.