Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether local authority social care services are funded and equipped to meet the needs of the 621,880 children referred to them in 2024.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS) for the 2025/26 financial year will grant councils in England access to over £69 billion in funding, which is a 6.8% cash terms increase on the 2024/25 financial year. Decisions on allocation of funding for all local authority-delivered services, including children’s social care, are for local authorities to take based on local need, priorities and statutory duties.
In recognition of the need to ensure local authorities have the resources needed to deliver good quality children’s social care services, the LGFS for 2025/26 provides two new grants for children and family services. A new Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant is set to be introduced, which will provide £270 million of new funding for investment in additional prevention activity through the implementation of Family Help and child protection reforms. The Children and Families Grant, worth £414 million, will also be available. This will consolidate several previous departmental children’s social care grants, including £253.5 million from the former Supporting Families Programme.
The government’s investment in 2025/26 is a significant step in our ambition to rebalance the children’s social care system and will enable local authorities to move towards financial sustainability and deliver improved outcomes for children and families.
Funding for future years will be subject to phase two of the spending review.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether all restrictions preventing local authorities from building new special education schools have been removed.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
Where a local authority identifies the need for a new school in its area, including a new special school, it must currently seek proposals to establish an academy (free school). This is known as the ‘free school presumption’. The free school presumption process is the main route by which local authorities establish new schools to meet the need for additional places.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will remove the legal presumption that all new schools are opened as academies, allowing local authorities to welcome proposals for all types of school and to put forward their own proposals, where they choose to do so. This will ensure new schools are opened by the provider with the best offer for local children and families. Ahead of the Bill receiving royal assent and coming into force, the free school presumption remains in place.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they are making in controlling the profits made by private organisations operating in the childcare sector.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
It is the department’s ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.
One of the signs of a healthy market is a range of providers offering choice and flexibility for parents. There is a vibrant mix of provision in the market, including schools, the private sector, voluntary and charitable organisations and childminders offering home-based care. The department keeps the structure of the market, and the financial health of providers, under close review.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the costs levied by private providers of special educational needs schools are being monitored and controlled.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The department does not monitor or collect data on independent schools’ finances, however these are published and publicly available for both commercial and charitable providers. Independent schools charge their own fees for education, health and care placements, and it is for the local authority to determine whether a placement offers value for money.
Independent special schools can play an important role in the special educational needs and disabilities system, particularly in meeting low-incidence needs. However, the department recognises that independent special schools have higher costs than maintained special schools and academies, both in commercial and charitable providers, and commissioners need to ensure placements are used appropriately.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they are making in improving the efficiency of handling complaints about the use of interpreters in the courts system.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
We have a complaints process that manages complaints about the interpreting service, complaints about specific interpreters, and complaints by interpreters. We are always looking to improve the efficiency of our processes. The Public Services Committee (PSC) of the House of Lords published a report into interpreting in the courts on 24 March 2025, and we are currently reviewing its recommendations about complaints. We will respond to the PSC’s report in due course.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that chairs of family group conferences are fully trained.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The department knows that many local authorities have an existing family group decision making (FGDM) service in place, including many who use the family group conference model. In some local authorities, independent coordinators are recruited to facilitate or ‘chair’ FGDM meetings and, in other areas, social workers are trained to deliver the service.
Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the department is seeking to place a duty on local authorities to offer an FGDM meeting to all parents and those with parental responsibility whose children are on the edge of care, unless this is not in the best interests of the child. This will ensure that families have the opportunity to participate in planning and decision-making at this critical point.
As part of this, the department will be developing guidance about best practice in delivering FGDM. This will include guidance on how to ensure that facilitators of the FGDM process have the appropriate skills and training. We are conscious of the additional resources that local authorities will require to fulfil this measure, which may include recruiting or training extra staff. That is why this government has committed to an uplift of £13 million for the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant for 2025/26, which will be used to support the rollout of FGDM across the country for all families on the edge of care. This money can be used to expand a local authority’s existing service, including training additional facilitators for FGDM.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to help young people to avoid the dangers of gambling.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
We are committed to protecting young people from gambling harm. Since 2020, children and young people have been taught about the risks relating to gambling as part of the statutory Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum in England.
We are introducing a statutory levy to be paid by gambling operators raising funding for research, prevention and treatment of gambling-related harms. The levy will play an important part in the Government’s wider aim to have better informed and protected young people when it comes to gambling-related harms.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to figures released by the Office for National Statistics on 21 November showing that 946,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are not currently in education, employment or training, what steps they are taking to address this.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
This government is determined to break down barriers to opportunity for all our young people. We will act to prevent the damage caused to the lives of young people who are not in education, employment or training. The government recognises the complex, long-standing nature of the challenge, and will make a raft of changes to tackle it.
Young people are required to continue in education or training until they turn 18. We are preventing young people from losing touch with education or employment before the age of 18 through a guaranteed place in education and training for all 16 and 17-year-olds, expanded work experience and careers advice, action to tackle school attendance and improved access to mental health services for young people in England. Over £7.5 billion in 16 to 19 programme funding will be invested during the 2024/25 academic year, to pay for education for any 16, 17 or 18-year-olds in post-16 education.
£240 million has been announced to drive forward measures in the Get Britain Working White Paper. This includes a youth guarantee for all young people aged 18-21 in England to ensure that they can access quality training, educational opportunities or help to find work. Working with Mayoral Authorities, and building on existing provision and entitlements, we will test new ways of supporting young people into employment or training. To do this, we will mobilise eight place-based youth guarantee trailblazers with £45 million of funding in 2025/26.
The comprehensive package also includes: a new national jobs and careers service to help more people into work, foundation apprenticeships to give people a new route into skilled work, Get Britain Working Plans for the economically inactive, and the launch of Skills England to open new opportunities for young people.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to introduce amendments to the Employment Rights Bill to clarify that foster carers are not employees.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
I pay tribute to the vital efforts of foster carers, who carry out a challenging role that requires skill, dedication and love. The government will ensure more children can receive loving care in foster families.
We will work with councils and fostering services to ensure foster carers receive the support they need and deserve. However, there are no plans to use the Employment Rights Bill to legislate on the employment status of foster carers.
My officials are working closely with officials from the Department for Education on how best to support foster carers.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the proposal by the Share Foundation to introduce a 'Default Withdrawal at 21' scheme for HMRC-allocated child trust funds.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is grateful for the suggestion made by the Share Foundation of a way in which HMRC could develop a system of paying out the savings held in matured Child Trust Fund (CTF) accounts that have not been accessed by the account owners by the age of 21.
This proposal is complex and could not be implemented easily, or without allocating significant resources. The savings in these accounts belong to the account owner even if they are not aware of the account’s existence. For HMRC to close these accounts, obtain the savings in those accounts and transfer them with or without the owner’s consent would require careful legal consideration. This is quite apart from the operational systems and resources across Government departments and CTF providers that would be required to monitor the transactions.
The Government is committed to reuniting all young adults with their CTFs and recognises the importance of ensuring that young adults can benefit from these funds as they reach adulthood.
To that end, HMRC continues to work with CTF providers, industry representatives and stakeholders to explore ways of increasing the profile of CTFs and enabling account owners to be aware of and trace their accounts. HMRC has ongoing work with the University and Colleges Admissions Service to encourage awareness among student peer groups and a communications plan which targets young people. HMRC has recently amended gov.uk to reference The Share Foundation’s CTF account tracing service, providing an additional way for young people to trace their accounts.