Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Bousted

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to this amendment, but I have to say that the idea that schools have not been at the centre of child protection and safeguarding over the last 20 years is just ludicrous. Under the last Government, the central grant to local authorities decreased by 40%. Real-terms school funding decreased by 9%. In that period, schools became the fourth emergency service as children’s social work, child protection and all the safeguarding systems around the child were absolutely decimated by austerity.

Schools have become extremely good at identifying children in need of safeguarding and protection. They have become extremely good at providing information, support and training to their staff, and they did this very well at a time when the last Government were reducing real-terms support to schools. They have had to become experts in child safeguarding and child protection because the other services that should have been there to work with schools simply were not. Multi-agency professional teams, legally responsible for working with schools to support them to protect children, will strengthen child safeguarding and child protection. CPD, or professional development, is always helpful, but the idea that schools need extensive CPD on this, that they have not been doing this, and that it will be a new thing to them is, frankly, ridiculous.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

Although I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, about schools becoming very good at child protection in recent years, there will be a cost to engaging in this activity. I support my noble friend Lord Agnew and his point about the cost for schools. All schools are facing a very severe funding shortfall, and I am concerned that they will have to make a lot of redundancies. None of us wants to see that but schools are telling me that it is the only way they will be able to balance their budgets. If the Government’s worthy target of getting 6,500 new teachers into the profession is a net figure of leavers and people coming into the profession, then redundancies will make them miss that target. I support the point about money being needed to support this activity.