Children and Young People: Literacy

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, touching on the—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. Going back to the Little Moments Together campaign that I was talking about earlier, we have provided grant funding for early years voluntary and community sector partners, including the National Literacy Trust, to work with families on that campaign. As I said earlier to the noble Baroness, there are also ways in which we can look at the relationship with other organisations, particularly creative and arts organisations, to help to ensure that the joy of reading is available to all children, whatever their background.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I speak as a teacher and—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Reading.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

And the noble Lord will be marking my homework later.

The National Literacy Trust says that one in seven primary schools in the UK does not have a library, and in London it is one in four. It has a ready-made Libraries for Primaries campaign set up with Penguin. Will the Government think about sorting this out now?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As a fellow teacher, although from quite a long time ago, I can say that the noble Lord makes a very good point. It builds on the earlier point about how we can work alongside the National Literacy Trust and others, along with the Government’s reading framework, to make sure that schools know and have the information and best practice available to them to develop libraries if they do not have them, and to make the most of them if they do.