Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Holmes of Richmond and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I congratulate him on all the work that he continues to do in this area. I thank my friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for cosigning my Amendments 491 and 498. I will take them in reverse order, with Amendment 498 first.

Quite simply, it addresses the issue we discussed in the previous group: current SEND provision is not working. It is not working for the SENCOs, who try their utmost; it is not working for the teachers, who strain every sinew to educate all in their classrooms; it is not working for the parents; and, most importantly, it is not working for children with special educational needs or a disability. Yet it can, if we start from the provision of inclusive by design and set out an approach where the funding is identified and ascribed to that SEND provision. The department should and must reach out beyond its budgetary constraints, because the reality is that this is far more than an issue of education. For example, there is a clear causal relationship between the education attainment gap and the subsequent employment attainment gap for those with disabilities.

Other departments must also pull their weight in addressing this issue of special educational needs and disability provision. This is why in Amendment 491 I suggest a practical, reasonable and achievable measure to make a difference across government: to introduce a mentorship scheme for those young people with special educational needs or disabilities.

Before the question arises of distracting departmental officials from their incredibly important work, or of putting more pressure on already overstretched resources, I suggest to the Minister that this would be an ideal situation for an effective, practical and achievable public-private partnership. Imagine how local, regional, national and international businesses could get involved to help support and be part of the delivery of such a mentorship scheme for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Imagine the empowerment for those young people in hearing from adults in successful careers, professions, jobs, activities and third-sector work, across the piece, who have lived experience of being a disabled person and have come through, succeeded and achieved. That is not just mentorship; that is leadership and empowerment, enabling all those young people.

The scheme could be brought in with minimal, if any, disruption or resource pressures put on the department. The difference it would make for those children with special educational needs and disabilities could be profound, impacting their educational experience, setting them up for life and enabling them not only to positively be part of closing that education attainment gap but subsequently closing the employment attainment gap. Any Government should have this as one of their core provisions. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 491 and 498, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to which I have attached my name, and Amendments 502U and 502V in my name.

With regard to Amendment 491, we have already spoken about how disabled children are being left behind. I worry that we are wrapping some disabled children in cotton wool. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked in an earlier group about resilience. We have to do more to ensure that our disabled children in schools can build resilience. This is one way in which they can do that.

This amendment is not about physical activity, but disabled children are routinely excluded from physical activity in schools and physical activity is one way that they can build this resilience. There are myriad excuses—“Well, they are sent to the library”—which are often wrapped up in health and safety. It sometimes feels that we are writing off disabled children before they have been given a chance. Often their world is smaller: there is less opportunity and a lack of ambition that is placed upon them.

This is something that I would like all children to be offered. It is probably dependent on what His Majesty’s Government are thinking of on enrichment around the school day. I declare an interest here as chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and we are talking to the Government about what this enrichment would look like. I believe that providing mentoring will help. It is about not just grades but building skills for life.

Amendment 498 simply seeks a view of SEND provision and how it is funded. Amendment 502U links to amendments that I have in other groups, but this one sits better in this group. I do not think that we have got right the support that disabled children are getting in school, and we must think about what more we can do.

The organisation Contact a Family and the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice surveyed 2,000 families with children and young people who have SEND but do not have an EHCP to see how the process was working. The survey concluded that there was not enough SEND support in schools, which leads many families to seek an EHCP to secure support for their child’s needs. This does not feel like the right way that the system should be supporting disabled children. It leads to school avoidance, absenteeism, pupils being put on part-time timetables and exclusion, and therefore an ever decreasing circle of support and ambition. This amendment seeks to ensure better support.

I am keen that access to the curriculum for disabled children is not reliant on a single member of staff. I do not, in this group of amendments, seek to debate the role of TAs. It is about how we get the right support beyond that so that we do not limit children’s opportunities. I know that there will probably be some discussion of whether, under this amendment, their role should sit under the supervision of a qualified teacher.

Finally, on Amendment 502V, we need to know how much we spend on SEND provision. In a previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew of Oulton—admittedly not talking about this—said how important it was to identify how every penny is spent in schools. We must have a better understanding of how SEND money is spent. I do not mean to place a lot of additional work on schools, but we need to know that we are getting value for money and, ultimately, that we have the right provision for disabled children to thrive.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Holmes of Richmond and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

I support the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I have a number of interests in sport, which are declared on the register. We might be here a long time if I went through them all.

We have been discussing this for longer than I have been involved in sport—and that is at least 30 years. As an ex-athlete and a sports fan, of course I want people to be watching and supporting. It is important to say that this is not a ban on secondary tickets; it would not be so in practice. This is about those people who hide behind the lack of transparency to mislead or defraud.

We should not take lightly the number of governing bodies which are in agreement on this issue. Again, in the length of time I have been involved in sport, it is very unusual for so many to agree on a single issue. They believe in this because they feel that it is very harmful to what they are trying to do. This is a pragmatic step that empowers consumers. It will not inhibit the legitimate exchange of tickets on secondary platforms. It will just make government policy much more effective.

I would like to come back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, on the Olympics and the Paralympics. It was briefly in the media about seats not being filled, but my understanding was that that was part of the contract with the IOC: it was IOC members who had to have those seats available if they wanted to watch the sport. It was not a case of tickets that had been sold and not used—it was a very specific area. Every Olympics and Paralympics Games have to set a number of those seats aside. I feel slightly embarrassed talking about that with the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, in the Chamber. He was much closer to it than I was.

With the Olympics and Paralympics, the legislation that was in place meant that people felt very confident, knowing that when they went to events they would get tickets. I have been to events where I have seen parents standing outside, explaining to their 10 year-old why the ticket they have is not valid. They might have paid over the odds for it, but the pressure from children to see One Direction and all those other people is huge. As a parent you might pay more, because you want to give that experience to your child. You do not spend lots of time checking out different methods of buying tickets on the internet; you buy the ticket because you want to be there. This is about protecting those people and making sure that they know that those seats are protected.

This is pragmatic. Nobody loses out from this proposal apart from those who seek to make huge profits by mis-selling or defrauding consumers. I strongly support the work that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is doing in this area, because it is vital that we do this.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I will start with a couple of apologies. The first is for arriving a few seconds into the speech of my noble friend Lord Moynihan. That was partly to do with the excellent speed of the Minister in marshalling us through this, while simultaneously being due to a slight go-slow on the part of my guide dog in getting here this afternoon. I also apologise for not being able to speak to this amendment in Committee; it was my birthday, and I wrongly prioritised a celebratory dinner ahead of speaking on that occasion.

What are we trying to achieve with this? It is not complicated; it does not say anything negative about the concept of a secondary market for tickets. It is simply about this: if we can improve, we will get more tickets into the hands of more sports fans for more events, and we will drive a far more efficient ticketing operation across sport, art, culture and music.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised a very important point: what is a ticket? That question was not taken up by the Minister on that occasion, so I will tempt her this evening into perhaps going into it in her response, because it is a key point. If we are talking about tickets, it makes sense for us to consider what a ticket is, and crucially, off the back of that, it seems reasonable to consider what a ticket could and perhaps should be. That involves consideration of the physical, the electronic ticket, its commercial and legal characteristics, and what is set around it as regards transferability and negotiability. It seems to be quite sensible to think, debate and discuss all those elements so that we are all clear as regards what we are talking about.

If I am lucky enough to get a ticket for Centre Court at Wimbledon, but then a week before I am struck down with a late spring flu, it seems perfectly reasonable and absolutely right that I should be allowed to resell that ticket to somebody who was not lucky enough to get it in the primary sale. Similarly, it seems absolutely reasonable that I should not be able to make a profit on that ticket, and should be able to get back only its face value. Even more so, if from the outset I pitched into the ticket market with no intention of going anywhere near Centre Court and SW19, it seems absolutely reasonable that there should be no proper purpose in the deriving of profit from that purchase.

The ticket is not a piece of real property; it is a licence—an opportunity. It is the chance to sit on one of those hallowed seats at Centre Court, not something to put away and deal with as if it was some property that can be sold to the highest bidder, who perhaps has nothing to do with sport.

At London 2012 we probably had the most discussions around the senior leadership table about ticketing, because it matters. We knew that whatever we did, most people would not get one of those tickets to the greatest show on earth. We had to be absolutely clear and robust in how we structured that ticket offer so that, even if people were unlucky and did not get a ticket, they could at least see exactly what we did at every stage and see that it was transparent, fair and that there was no secondary market.