Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendment 208 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. The reason is very simple. I do not know how many of your Lordships have seen a documentary available on BBC iPlayer called “Lover, Liar, Predator”. For those who have not seen it, it is pretty searing. It has a happy ending in the sense that the women who were abused by this man—who started at the age of 17—in the end learned about one another, got together and very bravely faced their accuser in court. A Scottish jury found the predator guilty on all counts by a unanimous decision.
The reason I mention this is that, in almost every case, the predator seized upon young women when they were 16, 17 or 18. That is the age at which, frequently, young women—and some young men, although they are usually a bit slower on the uptake—get involved in relationships. At that age, without the right education, without understanding, frankly, the nature of some men, it is easy to get into a relationship in which one quickly loses one’s sense of self—the ability to take one’s own decisions and to direct the course of one’s life.
This was articulated at the briefing the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, kindly arranged last week, which some of us were at. Some of the students themselves spoke powerfully of their own cases, or those of people they have known who, at that vulnerable stage in their lives, growing into sexual beings, got it wrong. Given particularly that this accords completely with the Government’s new strategy, the more we can do to reinforce that and to enable this cadre of children—some several hundred thousand, which is a not insignificant number—to receive the education that all their peers in other forms of education are receiving seems a no-brainer.
Baroness Sater (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 243C standing in my name and those of my noble friends in sport, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I thank them for supporting this amendment.
My amendment follows up on an amendment previously brought forward so powerfully by my noble friend Lord Moynihan in Committee, which attracted cross-party support. I am delighted that he has rejoined our Front Bench, with responsibility for energy and net zero. We will miss him from debates on sport policy. I will do my best to match his energy.
We have an ambition across the House to raise educational outcomes and improve children’s well-being. The school curriculum is currently under review, and that makes this a particularly timely moment. My amendment is offered in a constructive spirit, as was my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s, as a way of supporting the Government’s wider aims by ensuring that physical education and school sport are considered in a coherent and strategic way.
This amendment asks the Secretary of State to publish within 12 months
“a national strategy for physical education and sport in schools”,
and to review and report on it annually to Parliament. It does not advise how schools should deliver provision. Instead, it brings together existing priorities such as daily physical activity, teacher training and inclusion for disabled pupils into a single framework, with clear outcomes and accountability. To be clear, it is intended to assist and not constrain government policy.
The evidence shows that regular physical activity and engagement in school sport not only improves health and well-being but supports concentration, behaviour, attendance and attainment in literacy and numeracy, with benefits that extend into later life. Many schools are already doing great work in this area, often under significant pressure. To make this work more effective, teachers need the right resources, training and support.
While the Bill has children’s well-being in its name, it has not addressed how schools could properly use physical education, sport and physical activity to support this and improve educational outcomes. This amendment seeks to offer a fully integrated national strategy to address that gap and monitor and evaluate the best way of doing it. Data, evaluation and analysis are so important to this endeavour.
It is a strong belief, which I know is shared across this Chamber, that physical education is not merely a subject; it is a cornerstone in the development of young people, fostering health, resilience, teamwork and confidence. When embedded effectively, it can also contribute to wider educational goals, supporting behaviour, attendance and attainment across the curriculum. This amendment also encourages collaboration between education, health, sport and the voluntary sector, and provides a framework to align existing efforts in this space behind a shared national vision. It identifies the leadership role of the Minister in bringing that collaboration together and ensuring consistency of approach.
Back in 2021, I was a member of the taskforce established by the Association of Physical Education. We published a report, which issued a clear call to government to put physical education at the heart of school life. If the Government are serious, as I believe they are, about improving well-being in schools and giving every child an opportunity to thrive, this amendment would offer a constructive opportunity to consider how a national strategy for physical education and school sport could help deliver those ambitions. I therefore hope that the Minister will see this amendment in that spirit and give it careful and positive consideration.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for a very simple reason. An awful lot of what we have been discussing today, and in recent days in Committee, is about trying to make this Bill as child-centric and school-centric as possible. There is a common theme running through many of these amendments. Given the pace at which the world is changing and the challenges that parents, schools, teachers and children have, to allow each individual entity to try to navigate their way through these changes in a wonderfully sort or British laissez-faire way will be wholly unrealistic and will not produce good outcomes.
Whether or not one likes to compare this country to them, examples of countries that have very centralised approaches to identifying what is safe and what is not safe for children include the People’s Republic of China—which, I remind noble Lords, has the only parliamentary assembly larger than your Lordships’ House—and France, to which some hereditary Peers perhaps have some antipathy for ancestral reasons. In both cases, those countries take it upon themselves systematically to proactively try to identify what is safe and what is not safe.
As an example that I think I may have mentioned in Committee of what can go wrong, and is going wrong, one of the best known technologies in classrooms now is Google Classroom. Let us say that you are on Google Classroom, provided through the school, you are being asked to use that to do a project, and that project is something to do with geography. To complete your project, you naturally go to Google Maps, which is conveniently there on the screen as part of the cluster of products linked into Google Classroom. The minute you leave Google Classroom and go on to Google Maps, you as a child and you as a school lose every protection you previously had for your data. Everything suddenly becomes visible to Google, and the data becomes saleable. It is making money out of the schoolchildren who are using the apps linked to Google Classroom.
One has to understand the financial model that these very successful companies use. We cannot expect individual schools and the data-processing officers within schools, who will be teachers who probably have multiple other responsibilities, to be on top of all the changes taking place in the products being sold in a very alluring way to schools. The companies will often say that this is being done with the overt or tacit approval and backing of His Majesty’s Government, which may or may not be true. It is extraordinarily difficult for these schools to identify what is safe and not safe, and what is effective in terms of outcome and what is less effective, because there is no moderating body at the moment that is trying to make sense of this on behalf of these schools, which are being assailed on all sides by multiple pressures.
On the one hand, we have a Government who are implying that this is good and we need more of it. Simultaneously, there is all the debate we are having about the amount of time we are spending on screens and the way we are using screens possibly having very unfortunate side-effects. To have all of this going on at the same time without any clear guidance and sense of direction from His Majesty’s Government is distinctly unhelpful. All these amendments are simply asking the Government to take a lead, to provide in a totally apolitical way some clarity about what is safe and what is not safe, to put processes in place to ascribe responsibility to those bodies capable of doing this, to do it in a co-ordinated way and, above all, to remember that we are talking about are the short, medium, and long-term interests of children.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is a bit like the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, having the two doctors in the room and great passion. It reminds me a bit of this Chamber, actually: we can certainly go for it at times.
I normally shy away from edtech, but I thought, “No, come on, grow up, Storey, you need to look at this carefully”. I went into teacher mode, I am afraid. I have some general thoughts. All the amendments grapple with the tension between protecting children and preparing them for the digital world. We need to balance parental rights, children’s educational needs and teachers’ autonomy. Technology is neither inherently good nor bad, and implementation and context matter. Finally, there is the risk of one-size-fits-all solutions not accounting for diverse school context and pupils’ needs.
I turn first to Amendment 227:
“Register of software tools permitted in schools”.
There are positives, are there not? This would ensure minimum safety and privacy standards for educational software, protect children from inappropriate content or data harvesting, and address current inconsistencies in firewalls, as some schools overblock, preventing legitimate learning. What are the concerns? There is a risk of creating a bureaucratic bottleneck as innovation in edtech moves faster than government approval processes. It could stifle teachers’ ability to use emerging tools or respond to pedagogical needs. Whitelisting requirements could be too rigid. What about trial periods for new tools? And who decides what meets curriculum principles could become politically contentious.
Then I look at Amendments 234, 235 and 236 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Their intent is to reduce screen time for young children, which is particularly important for early years development and the reception baseline. They address equity concerns that not all families might have reliable devices or internet access at home. Handwriting skills and motor development remain important, especially for young children. The amendments reduce the potential for cheating or AI assistance in assessments. They give parents agency over the child’s screen exposure. From head teacher experience, I say that some parents are deeply concerned about excessive screen time and lack of control.
The concerns are that reducing screen time might disadvantage students who are more comfortable with digital tools. It could also limit the development of general computer skills and risk making education feel out of step with modern skills. It could create additional administrative burdens for schools, as managing two parallel systems could be impractical for certain subjects beyond just computing, and might inadvertently stigmatise children whose parents opt out. So it is over to the Minister to unravel the pros and the cons and tell us what we should do.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I am happy to have added my name to Amendments 121A and 131A by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I am grateful to officials from the Department for Education who had a meeting with us to discuss these amendments and the reasoning behind them.
The reasoning behind those amendments is really simple. The Sara Sharif incident happened despite multiple reviews looking into not dissimilar cases, in some cases over previous decades. In this case, I do feel that almost an extreme preventive approach is required to make sure that we do not have a repetition. The point was made by the officials that there have been significant improvements in the quality of children’s services in most of the country and about two-thirds are now in a reasonable shape, but that raises the question: what about the other third?
If there is another case, God forbid, like Sara Sharif —and history, for I am a historian by background, teaches us that that probably will happen—the opprobrium that will be heaped upon whichever unfortunate Ministers and officials happen to be in office at the time will be considerable and, in our view, is avoidable. We should mitigate that risk by assuming that we have to legislate for the one-third of children’s services that are not in good shape, because that is almost certainly where the accidents will happen. One of the key findings of the Sara Sharif review was that there have been systemic weaknesses again and again, despite all the inquiries and the well-intentioned actions that followed them. This is important enough that we feel we have to prepare and assume that the worst might happen and do everything in our power to prevent it.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I added my name to Amendments 121A and 131A. There is a real problem of mistrust with elective home education against traditional education. I acknowledge my noble friend Lord Crisp, and am delighted to be on his working party to try to do something about it.
I was in the same meeting as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and my noble friend Lord Russell where we talked to the DfE. It was rather wonderful, because instead of talking about technicalities, one of the people there started talking about cricket, which I am much happier with than Section 31s and things. He accused us of setting the field for a bad ball—so we were being extremes. Obviously, I came back with no setting the field for a bad ball but putting some sweepers out as well just in case. The whole point of legislation is to avoid the disasters, the out of the ordinary, the Sara Sharifs. We were also told that a possible future home visit might deter parents from seeking help with a Section 31. Again, I cannot see why. These amendments are incredibly sensible and thoughtful, and their spirit would help those avoidable disasters, which, tragically, may well happen.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
I remind the House that if Amendment 138 is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 139 and 140 because of pre-emption.
Amendment 138
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I rise, first, to thank the Government, on behalf of myself and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for bringing forward Amendment 146, putting carers on the register. We heard moving testimony in Committee about some incredibly young carers aged eight, nine or 10 looking after several members of their families—siblings and parents. In some cases, they were apparently being home-educated, but from the point of view of the adults they were caring for, looking after them took priority. That is why it is so important and so helpful that they will be recorded.
I also support my noble friend Lord Crisp and Amendment 175ZC from the noble Lord, Lord Wei, which is along the same lines—it is for children who are coming to the final parts of their home education and will, one hopes, take and pass exams. There is a real postcode lottery, particularly post-Covid, in access to examination centres. In parts of the country such as Cornwall or large parts of the north of England, it is extraordinarily difficult for parents to access examination centres for their children. In some cases, they have to travel one and a half to three hours to go to them. In many cases, their children are not taking a single paper; they might be taking three or four papers for mathematics, so they have to go back and forth. Some of those children will have some challenging behaviours and may find that an examination centre is not an environment that they are entirely comfortable in. Having it within reasonable reach and access of where one lives is exceptionally important.
For those reasons, I hope that the Minister will think carefully about this and look at some of the facts and figures. The charity, Education Otherwise, has looked into this in great detail and has a lot of really quite useful and compelling information. I hope that if the department is prepared to look at that, it might be able to think again.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 161A, 175ZA, 175ZB and 175ZC in my name. These amendments sit in a part of the Bill that would be felt most sharply not in Whitehall but in kitchens and living rooms by parents doing their best for children whose needs do not fit neatly in the school system. When Parliament reaches into family life, it has to do so with care, because it is easy to create a framework that looks reasonable on paper and yet breathes mistrust in practice.
Again, I want to acknowledge at the outset the Government’s movement in this group. Government Amendment 158 recognises the reality of exam access and ensures that information about GCSE routes can be provided to parents who ask for it. Amendment 159 creates a regular forum for parents to raise concerns and discuss how this regime operates. Amendment 161 tidies the drafting around exam-related provisions. These are sensible steps. They start to show an understanding that families need information and a channel of engagement, and I welcome them.
Yet there remains a gap between permission and protection. Information may be offered, but access can still fail, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others. A forum may be held, but families can still feel unheard when nothing changes. These amendments in my name aim to close that gap with light-touch safeguards that strengthen legitimacy and reduce conflict. With the Government having shown that they are listening, I think that many of us hope that, on these quite non-contentious amendments, they will also come back with suggested changes to the Bill, as well as afterwards in the statutory guidance, to understand these realities.
Amendment 161A would require each local authority to establish a home education parental advisory board, composed primarily of parents with recent experience of elective home education in the area. We are not trying to create new bureaucracy for its own sake; it is about a practical feedback loop. Families most affected by these powers are often those most able to spot unintended consequences earlier than we can in this environment. When policy is made without their input, misunderstanding becomes routine, and routine misunderstanding can become the culture of the system. Advisory boards would keep local authorities grounded in reality; they would create discipline around reasoning, and when an authority departs from a formal recommendation, my amendment suggests that it needs to explain why. That simple requirement can improve decision-making and build trust.
I want to express strong support for Amendment 160 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, which addresses a long-standing injustice that the House should not tolerate any longer. Home-educated children face serious obstacles in accessing examinations. Parents are left to navigate a patchwork of centres, fees, refusals, capacity limits and inconsistent arrangements. This is not just in small cases—it is in many instances. Qualifications open doors, and access is important; we must not make the children pay the price. With my own children, we had to travel several hundred miles to the south coast pretty much for all their GCSEs, and you can imagine how many they did, how many you multiply that by, and how many hotel stays that meant for my dear wife, who did most of the heavy lifting, although I drove a few times myself.
My Amendment 175ZC would place a clear duty on local authorities to secure reasonable access to approved exam centres, building on the thinking around Amendment 160, including adjustments for children with special educational needs. That would ensure that the responsibility is not left just to good will or market convenience. Somebody mentioned that, in the summer of last year, around 47,000 home-educated children in England were in their exam years, yet there are fewer than 200 centres listed as supporting them, many with limited capacity—and there is uneven geographic coverage. Whether a child can access qualifications should not depend on commercial viability or geography; we need to provide equitable access to this basic infrastructure as a responsibility of the state.
Amendment 175ZA deals with the related harm that is already appearing. Some providers are withdrawing opportunities for home-educated children in anticipation of new compliance burdens. Museums, activities, learning programmes and even basic services can become quietly harder to access. That may not be the Government’s intention but, because you are talking about a higher level of scrutiny and information-sharing requirements, that is already causing people to hold back. This amendment would draw a clear statutory line against discrimination and extra administrative hurdles imposed solely because a child is educated otherwise than at school. Lawful educational choice should not become a reason for exclusion.
Finally, Amendment 175ZB addresses the people who will operate these powers. I welcome the fact that the Government have indicated that training will be provided to those in local authorities working with home-educating families, and I welcome that. The House knows that guidance can be diluted over time, especially when you are under pressure and you have lots of families to look after with not much more funding. This amendment would require a national training standard to be issued, covering elective home education and related SEND, lawful decision-making and the avoidance of unconscious bias when dealing with these families. These families deserve consistency, and officers deserve clarity; a system with serious powers needs competent hands.
Safeguarding works best when families co-operate, and co-operation relies on trust. Trust is earned through fairness, understanding and clear routes for participation. These amendments would strengthen these foundations, and I hope that the Government show good will towards the many home-educating families who are going to have huge disruption to their lives in the coming years by looking at these amendments and others today, especially those on the area of access to exams. I urge the House to support them.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, once upon a time, in a previous moral panic about children’s safety, parents reacted to the media and politicians catastrophising by stopping their offspring playing outside unsupervised. The unintended consequence was the creation of what became known as cotton wool kids, prone to risk aversion, anxiety, lack of resilience and social isolation. Ironically, to compensate, many of those children were forced to cultivate their activities online. Their social interactions became virtual, and here we are.
I worry that we risk similar unintended consequences now if we rush to pass a social media ban for under-16s, so I will be opposing Amendment 94A. I know it has become normalised that, whatever social, cultural or moral panics we encounter, we believe that we can legislate to make them go away. I fear that this sort of lawmaking can lead to avoiding tackling difficult problems and to attempts at quick-fix solutions that too often create a whole new raft of difficulties down the line.
I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, blamed social media for eating disorders, radicalisation, terrorism, the mental health epidemic, ADHD, poor behaviour in the classroom, misogyny, violence against women and girls, and on and on. At this rate, all that Parliament would have to do is ban the internet for everyone and all problems would be solved. There is a danger of looking for easy answers and scapegoating social media for all society’s ills.
I worry about attempts to push this through too quickly or to fast-track it. It is interesting that the three-week fast-track consultation put forward in the other place has been discussed as though it is holding things back. The leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, calls it more “dither and delay”. But this proposal is new; it has only just arrived here on Report as an amendment that would fundamentally change every citizen’s relationship with social media, not just children’s. I worry about attempts at steamrolling it through, with an assumption that everyone agrees that it is so obvious and inevitable that there is no point opposing it. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for an attempt at proportionality, even though I do not think it goes far enough.
We are hectored that this is what parents want. There has not been a referendum of parents, though there are polls. Many parents are pulling their hair out and will be tempted by it—it is so much easier to say, “You can’t because it’s against the law”, than it is to assert adult authority. Teenagers’ and children’s pester power can be the bane of all our lives. If only the law could be extended to ban other things and make them illegal—no, you cannot wear that hoodie; no, you cannot spend hours gaming; no, you cannot go to that sleepover; no, you cannot gorge on junk food; no, you cannot go to that party. In truth, this approach encourages parents to outsource their authority and shifts responsibility from parents to the state. All families ultimately are being told that they are incapable of managing their children's habits, and that is a dangerous precedent. It can disarm parents in the name of empowerment. Is there really a consensus among parents on this? Many of my friends are split down the middle, so I do not think we can claim the evidence is in.
What about the incontrovertible scientific evidence that backs a ban? The jury is out. The causal relationship between social media and mental well-being in teens and young people is much more contested than has been implied. Recent extensive research by academics at Manchester University found no evidence that social media has increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression. The chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, Professor Louis Appleby, points out that the evidence is, at best, circumstantial, noting that self-harming in the young began well before social media took hold in that age group. That reflects what I know from my own work in relation to mental ill-health and young people; I do not think it can totally be blamed on social media.
An Oxford University study of nearly 12,000 children showed no correlation between screen time, including social media, and mental health. Instead, the way in which children engage with social media is what determines its impact and—shock horror—in many instances, evidence shows the positive impact of social media use. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that no more research is needed. That is anti-scientific and complacent, and I do not think it is true.
Let us be clear about what this amendment as drafted would do in relation to user services. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out the dangers to, for example, WhatsApp, websites such as Wikipedia and so on. That needs clarifying at the very least.
Despite histrionic headlines, social media can be used for self-educational ends. There is a new generation of autodidacts who are teaching themselves coding, video producing, editing and even musical instruments, languages and chess. I know that sounds rose-tinted and a bit glib, but social media often is a tool for connections—finding your tribe, making new friends—and a place where you can cultivate solidarity and autonomy as a young person. It can be a counter to the social trend towards fragmentation.
What about allowing the young to explore diverse political perspectives? On the eve of 16 year-olds being given the vote, surely it is important, if not essential, that we do not narrowly restrict soon-to-vote teens to state-sanctioned media channels. We want them to broaden their horizons, and explore and develop a democratic curiosity about the world, and they are going to do that online. When talking to school pupils, as I do often, I recommend that they find out about their peers around the world as part of them learning about international relations. What civic lessons might British children learn by looking at those brave protesters in Iran whose commitment to freedom has given them the courage to take on a theocratic Islamic regime and whose stories we know because they used social media to organise and to connect with each other and the rest of the world? That was, of course, before the ayatollah shut down the internet—oh, the irony.
As for safety and whether this ban will throw children off a cliff edge, it risks not equipping youth with the skills to safely and responsibly navigate the online world, knowing how to identify problems, spot dodgy red flags and apply strategies to deal with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, pointed out, in all likelihood, many pre-16 year-olds will find ways of migrating to even riskier unregulated platforms or the dark web without guardrails and zero moderation. Our teenagers and children are clever and, dare I say it, devious. They will find a way. They will use VPNs—but it is okay, because noble Lords are going to ban those too. I hear that there is already a roaring trade in fake IDs among pre-teens.
Finally, how will over 16 year-old adults be affected by this ban? Whereas the Online Safety Act age-gated only certain types of harmful content, Amendment 94A would age-gate entire platforms, even when the content is child-friendly or harmless. According to Big Brother Watch, a 70 year-old accessing the neighbourhood news, a 50 year-old looking up the history of golf on Wikipedia, a 30 year-old small business owner responding to customers on Instagram and a 17 year-old wanting to message parents on the way home from school would all require age-verification measures. That is the threat to adult civil liberties and the right to privacy and, in effect, it means that we will have to digitally verify to participate in the public square. I do not necessarily think that young people will gain from this, despite the hyperbole.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report, and I think some of the contributions are in danger of erring on the wrong side of self-regulation. We should stick to the point; I will be very brief and simply try to explain for the benefit of the Government Front Bench, because in various Bills going through Parliament in the last month or so, this subject has raised itself in various forms. I sometimes notice the Front Bench being slightly amazed at what is coming at them from all sides and not necessarily understanding why. That is largely because they were not in your Lordships’ House at the time we went through the lengthy discussions about the Online Safety Act. What they are hearing today is a collective howl of rage and frustration across the House because what we thought we were very clear was meant to happen has not happened. I will give one or two facts which back up the view of my noble friend Lady Kidron that, whatever we do, we have to gather together—the right reverend Prelate made a very good point—and collectively send a message to the other place that this situation is simply not good enough.
Today, within the last 10 hours, a court case has been going on in California against Snap, Meta and TikTok where a group of parents are accusing those organisations of creating products which are addictive. It so happens that in the last 24 hours, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has settled with the complainants. That is because, I suspect, if they had not settled, the chief executive of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, would shortly have had to appear in person in the court to answer the case against his company. He chose not to do so. Mr Zuckerberg is apparently also in the queue to give evidence at this trial, and it will be interesting to see whether his company takes the same route.
Yesterday, along with many other colleagues, I was part of a session of Learn with the Lords in the Education Centre. I took the opportunity to talk to the young people, most of whom were 14 and 15, about what they thought of a social media ban, which all of them were aware of—probably through social media. Almost without exception, they said they were against it and gave the sort of reasons one would expect, such as “That’s where we get our news from”, and so on. The teachers were completely and utterly in favour of a ban. We can take from that what we will, but I suspect the fact that they see day in and day out in the schoolroom the effect on the pupils they are trying to help, to develop and to manage—and to mitigate, in some cases, difficult behaviours—means that are completely united that this is unsustainable.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned that in Australia they have a different regulator, an e-safety commissioner. Comparing the e-safety commissioner in Australia with what we have in Ofcom is a bit like comparing “Crocodile Dundee” with “Dixon of Dock Green”. The difference is that stark.
Last week in the Peers’ Lobby, I met one of the bereaved parents whose child has died as a result of exposure to social media. I told that bereaved parent that a group of us were going to meet the chief executive of Ofcom within the next couple of weeks. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Simon, would you give the chief executive a message from me?”. I said, “Yes, of course”. He said—and you will excuse my Anglo-Saxon—“Would you kick her up the arse?”.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendment 49, specifically relating to sibling contact, to which I have added my name. In doing so, I do not want to repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, other than to stress, as she did, the importance of maintaining and developing sibling contact.
Where a child has to be separated from his or her parents, temporarily or permanently, the most important viable relationship remaining is often with that child’s siblings or half-siblings. Typically, siblings have shared experience of the parenting they have received, and they have, of course, a relationship which can long outlive the relationship that they have or have had with their parents.
The Children Act created a presumption that children should be placed together, but that is not always possible to arrange or to achieve. Contact between separated siblings, particularly if no longer in the same school or placed at some distance apart, can require commitment not only by their respective carers but by the responsible local authorities. Properly arranged sibling contact typically requires a concrete plan by the local authority and an underlying framework of support. It may, it has to be said, sometimes influence what happens at the next stage after the care proceedings and determine what happens if the children are to be placed for adoption.
Amendment 49 would help, because it would not require or assume that both or all of the children will be in the care of the local authority, and it would thereby sensibly extend the scope of local authority duties towards siblings.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of Amendment 62 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler.
The case for this is, really, fairly straightforward. Children in care often have quite strong mental health needs and are not in the best of mental health. Care leavers comprise about 1% to 3% of the general youth population, but that translates into them being responsible for one quarter of the homeless population. That group are twice as likely to die prematurely than the general population, and in many cases suicide is the largest reason for that high death rate. That is a fairly strong causal link between children in the care system, or those going into the care system, having fragile mental health, and that not being picked up as early as it should be. This amendment simply asks that we please ensure that, when children have an assessment of the quality of their mental health, the practitioners who are doing that are qualified in mental health. Only in that way can we be sure that we catch those vulnerable young people at that early stage and that they do not become one of the depressing statistics that I have just mentioned.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 62, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and to which I have added my name. I declare, as ever, that I am a teacher and I thank the National Children’s Bureau for its help on this.
Children do not come into care because they have won the lottery of life; trauma is unlikely to be far from their lives. Yet our assessment processes still rely on professionals who may have little or no training in mental health or trauma-informed practice. Care-experienced young people told the Education Select Committee, as part of its inquiry into children’s social care, that local authorities are not always fulfilling their obligations to include emotional and mental health in their health assessments of children in care. One young person told the committee:
“I feel a lot could be explained if they understood the experience of trauma. It will take time. It will not go away at night, and sometimes before it gets better it could get worse. No one talks about that. You will not be okay if you are going into care; there is a reason why you are there, and so it is important that the minute you go into care every child should have a mandatory assessment, physical and mental, and there should be that on-call support for them”.
Bringing qualified mental health practitioners into the mandatory health assessment of children in care is simple, practical and overdue. I hope that the Government will use this amendment as an opportunity to do more for children in care and to make their lives and, as importantly, their futures better.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the adoption and special guardianship support fund was established in 2015 to provide therapeutic support to families caring for children through adoption and guardianship. Since its inception, the fund has supported over 4,000 families and played a transformative role in so many families’ lives, offering interventions that have helped children manage emotions, process early trauma and build trusting relationships, while equipping parents and guardians with the tools they need to care effectively. In fact, over the past 12 months, the Home for Good charity talked to a large number of families who had used the fund: 67% accessed therapy, such as counselling, play therapy and family therapy; 34% accessed therapeutic parenting support or training; and 33% accessed specialist assessments.
I am grateful to Minister MacAlister for his letter following a meeting with a number of us, in which he said:
“Many children who become adopted or are in kinship care have faced difficulties in early life that mean that they cannot live with their birth parents. These experiences place them at greater risk of mental health challenges, often made more complex by increased SEND prevalence compared to their peers. I am clear that government has a responsibility to these children which I am determined to meet it both now and in the future”.
He also said:
“The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund has helped children and their families access a wide range of interventions, including play therapy and therapeutic parenting courses”.
Imagine the dismay among those parents that this element of the fund has been reduced.
In Committee, I gave the example of a family living close to me that had adopted two children at a very young age who were absolutely traumatised. Counselling, paid for by the support fund, has created a huge change in those children. Because the fund has been cut, they are not able to continue with that provision.
Interestingly, that has been mirrored by a number of comments from other families talking about the support, who have said: “The support we had so far dramatically helped. Any loss of it would be devastating”; “My child is sick. She needed the help so she grows up feeling accepted and cared for and not angry and let down”; “Both our boys have additional needs. It scares us that we might lose the help they desperately need”; “The recent reduction of the adoption support fund has been a shock and has led to huge stress for the families who rely on it’; “The new financial limits imposed are a major concern. We are already stretched to our limits financially”; and, from a professional, “It is hard, when told by professionals that your child needs more support, and then you realise you cannot access what they recommend”.
My amendment is simple: that element of the fund should be restored, so that parents who adopted and fostered children can get that resource, which those children so desperately need. I beg to move.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in speaking to these amendments, I declare that I am a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Permanence, alongside Rachael Maskell, the MP for York. In 2019, the APPG carried out an inquiry into the fund. I will simply read its recommendation 6, which is headed “Continuity”:
“The department should ensure a continuity of therapeutic support by removing the current annual application requirement, enabling agencies and authorities to apply for support that orients around the needs of children and their families”—
not necessarily the budgeting needs of the department in question.
I know, from carrying out that inquiry and subsequent work that I have been involved in—I am a governor of Coram, the children’s charity, which has a large say in adoption—that the experience of families that have been fortunate enough to access the support given by the fund is that it is literally transformative, albeit in many cases, when the therapeutic support is accessed, there is already a situation within the family where adoption breakdown is potentially a reality. Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in the level of adoption breakdown. If one looks at the amount of effort, time and emotional expense involved in going through an adoption, one will find it difficult to imagine having, in the end, to admit that it has not worked but has failed—which is devastating both for the adoptive family and for the child or the children. This fund genuinely does make a difference. One of the achievements of His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition when they were in government was getting it on to the statute book.
One of the problems with it is that continuity of support is fundamental; this is not the sort of support that responds well to being stop-start. Unfortunately, because the flow of funding has not been consistent and because, for whatever reason—perhaps through negotiations with the Treasury—the department has been unable to be assured enough of the funding, that makes it extraordinarily difficult for the department to say to the families that are currently getting or wish to get support that it will be available.
It makes the livelihoods of those practitioners providing this therapeutic support very difficult. This support is highly specialised because, in many cases, these children have been, and are, subject to really quite severe trauma. To be able to give the level of care required at the rate required, those professionals need consistency of funding from the Government, to enable them to stay in business and to be able to engage with a family on the basis that they will be able to provide sufficient support, over whatever time required for it to be effective, and to really make a difference. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will look at this carefully.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, this is an improved version of Amendment 165, tabled in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and me. We are all very grateful for this very positive response. Some 41,000 households in temporary accommodation have been placed out of area and 26,640 of them are households with children, so a large number of children will benefit from this.
I have three quick questions for the Minister. First, when she wound up the debate in Committee, she said some technical issues needed to be resolved. I think she said there were some operational issues to see how it can work. I assume those have been resolved. I hope there can be some IT solutions that mean we do not have to do this manually and it will be done automatically. Secondly, under proposed new subsections (6)(a) and (6)(b), the bodies that have to be notified that there is a child in their area in temporary accommodation out of area are medical practices and schools in England. Those living in Shropshire, for example, may be placed out of area in Wales—is there any duty to notify the Welsh authorities that they have children in temporary accommodation living in their area? Thirdly and finally, when will this very helpful amendment come into operation? What is the commencement date? Having said that, I warmly welcome this initiative.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, I tabled this amendment in Committee. I also pay tribute to Siobhain McDonagh for having pursued this for many years and the way in which she has worked with different parts of government to try to work through the issues. It was always really about the children and not about the problems that government has in doing this. I will now make a very lengthy peroration and simply say thank you.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, I supported and spoke to a similar amendment in Committee. Again, I will not be very long.
I want to celebrate this great example of when campaigning works. I pay tribute to Justlife, which worked alongside the Shared Health Foundation for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation. I want to stress the importance of this, and will not apologise for repeating what are such horrific figures. From 2023 to 2025, 80 children died while in temporary accommodation; that was 3% of total child deaths. From 2019 to 2024, temporary accommodation was cited as a factor in the deaths of 74 children.
Having said that, I want to stress, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Young, was hinting at, that it is crucial that this comes into effect as soon as possible. We could potentially save a life if GP surgeries and schools know the situation that children are in. Much more broadly, we need to get to a situation where we do not have children in temporary accommodation for the long periods of time they are now. Please let this be done as soon as possible.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, at Second Reading, I said that a great sorrow for me and many others is that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, is not with us, because she would have been intimately involved in the Bill. In particular, she would have put her full weight behind these two amendments. She was a clarion call for the voice of the child to be heard.
During the last five or six years in your Lordships’ House, we have had a succession of Bills—I include the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Victims and Prisoners Bill and the Online Safety Bill. In each case, a group of us across the Chamber has fought repeatedly to try to inject into the Bill as much as possible a recognition of the rights of children, and that children are not—and should not be treated in the same way as—adults. In each case, this has been necessary because it has become abundantly clear that this was not foremost in the minds of those drafting the Bill at that time. If that was embedded in the system, so that what is in the best interests of the child was automatically a major part of thinking behind drafting any part of a Bill, what a wonderful advance that would be.
I have been involved for many years with a charity called Coram, particularly the part of it called Coram Life Education, the largest provider of health education in primary schools across the United Kingdom. One thing that we teach children, starting at age five and through to 11, is the meaning of mutual respect. Mutual respect is about respecting children of different ethnicities, faiths, backgrounds and beliefs, and doing so in a considered and thoughtful way.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate. I have not particularly participated in this Bill, but I am always interested when noble Lords seek to incorporate various treaties we have signed into domestic law. The reason I say that is because of my experience in a variety of ways of having been a Minister. Paragraph 1.6 of the Ministerial Code, which is not a new obligation on Ministers, states that Ministers have to comply with the international agreements into which Governments and previous Governments have entered and which have usually been ratified by Parliament. The need to think about these sorts of issues, particularly around children, is already embedded into how policy framework strategies are deployed.
“From the mouths of children”
is in the Psalms and in the Gospels. That element of truth comes through: it is absolutely vital that children’s voices are heard. This is why things such as the Children Act 1989 was really important, about aspects of that.
However, I am really concerned, and I share the concerns that my noble friend Lady Spielman expressed, about whether these need to be incorporated as a whole into domestic law. Only a handful of other countries have done this: Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and, to some extent, or to the full extent of its devolved powers, the Scottish Parliament has decided to do the same—although noble Lords may be aware of the rulings after there was a referral to the Supreme Court which removed certain aspects of that legislation, partly because it counteracted the primacy of this Parliament in legislation and other matters.
However, as regards thinking through, I fully respect the long connection with education of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. Both my parents are teachers. I do not have children, so I do not have the same experiences there, but I am aware, from when I was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, of absolutely how much, just from the DNA, in effect, of being normal human beings, we would consider aspects of impacts on children.
The noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, said the difficulty about the conversations is that they get legalistic. Well, that is the whole point. We are talking about the law. If I think of Amendment 502G, perhaps there would have been a different ruling with the Michaela academy recently on whether somebody could pray at school or not. I think also of keeping schools open. I know there is an element of it being discussed in Amendment 502M. I encourage the people who have been distinguished general secretaries of unions to think of parents perhaps starting to sue schools for not staying open when there is some snow. The snow may not be stopping the children getting to school, but it might be stopping a couple of the teachers, so the decision is then to close down education for a whole day or more, not on behalf of the children but because they cannot get some teachers there. I referred to “legalistic” because that is where you start getting into disputes, going to court, trying to settle outside—all these other issues.
That is why I completely understand why ratifying that treaty was so important. That becomes guidance, a framework and an actual way of doing things, but it does not then become necessarily—I believe we have incorporated certain parts of the convention into domestic law—a straitjacket in effect on how we kind of evolve in terms of policy. There are risks, and I know that there has been another Supreme Court ruling trying to discourage judges and indeed people from bringing judicial reviews trying to change policy. But that is exactly where we get into issues that we can see in other legal cases that are often in the courts.
Obviously, I respect the distinguished legal experience of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, but I would have thought that the public sector equality duty, which recognises religion and belief, would already capture perhaps some of what he is trying to incorporate in his amendment.
I do not want to delay the Committee too much longer, but I think this is a case of “Be careful what you wish for”. What has happened for children that now makes it necessary to do this? The children were ignored when they were being groomed and when they went to the police. Children have been ignored in other situations. That grooming is still ongoing; I hope the police and the CPS are more alert as well. But going back to the substance, I hope that the way that the UNCRC has been effectively incorporated into how we go about our affairs as Ministers, as Parliament and as public servants should be sufficient. However, I will continue to try to understand the deficiency that we are trying to address by this wholesale incorporation of this into our domestic law when I genuinely do not believe it is needed.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
I will just swiftly respond to the noble Baroness. During the 14 years that her party was in office—I witnessed this first hand, because I am a retread, as I got re-elected back in in 2014—there was a series of Bills, some of which I mentioned I have been involved with, where children are directly involved and affected. Repeatedly, those Bills arrive here after—as per usual—minimal scrutiny down the Corridor, by design. It is manifestly clear that the detailed needs, requirements and rights of children have not systematically been thought through and embedded in the legislation, which is why we have had to go through lengthy debates to try to tease that out. I am proud to say that, in the majority of cases, faced with strong cross-party arguments in favour, the Front Bench of the noble Baroness’s party, repeatedly in different Bills, acceded to the strength of those arguments and amended the legislation to put children’s rights in there. Whatever the Ministerial Code may say, unfortunately that was not filtering its way down into the way that Bills were being drafted. Your Lordships’ House did its work very well, but what some of us are hoping and asking for is a situation where that requirement becomes less frequent and is abnormal rather than, I am afraid, substantively normal.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
I would say in return— I was trying to keep my speech brief—that I hear what the noble Lord said. He talked about being unsuccessful in keeping it brief. That is because we have had a lot of stuff about legalism. I am giving direct experience of government—I appreciate what the noble Lord said. I can give more examples. One reason why children get the flu vaccine every year is primarily to protect adults—the teachers and school workers—to stop the spread of flu. It is not really to help the kid. All sorts of things happen today that are actively encouraged to be done to the child in a way that should not be harmful.
I come back to the legislation and the point that is relevant. The Secretary of State for Education has the leading responsibility in government to have that horizon-scanning of every bit of legislation that affects children. If there have been deficiencies, I recognise them. I am not convinced that the incorporation of more law into domestic law is going to be the way to achieve that. I encourage the Minister in her reply to give confidence. Even if the noble Lord feels that the last Administration were deficient, I am sure that the current Administration will say that they are very much on top of it.
Frankly, it is a bit like when I was at DWP. I had primary responsibility for disabilities, so it was my job, working with my officials, to keep scanning legislation for how it would impact people with disabilities. That was not always very popular with other departments, which kept telling us to keep our noses out, but that is what we did. I am sure that that is what the Department for Education is intending to do. That said, I know that my noble friend Lady Barran was assiduous in her support of children, and I am sure that the Minister for this Government has continued to be so as well.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I was very happy to add my name to the noble Baroness’s on the majority of these amendments. She has outlined the compelling need to do something in these interrelated areas sooner rather than later. I will not bore your Lordships but rather try and illustrate one or two examples of what is going on in real time.
I will start with Copilot, a tool that most of us will be at least faintly familiar with—or will at least have heard of—and which is integrated into the Microsoft package that we use in Parliament. At the time that research was started by a group of organisations, including the 5Rights Foundation founded by the noble Baroness, Microsoft, which owns Copilot, stated publicly that Copilot was intended for users 18 and above, such as all your Lordships. However, in May 2025, the company announced without warning that Copilot would become available to users aged 13 and above. This shift raises important questions, none of which was answered at the time by Microsoft. The user age change proceeded without any published child rights impact assessment—which takes us back to an earlier group that we discussed—or documentation of any child participation in this decision. Using it in this way, without any child-focused safeguards, is unlikely to be in the best interests of the child, but currently there seems to be no satisfactory way to hold Microsoft to account for this.
A second example is Vimeo, a popular video channel that some of your Lordships may be aware of. In a particular case where a child used Vimeo and some of its video capability to do his homework, a detailed look at what Vimeo had done with his homework demonstrated that 92 different commercial companies had gained access to this child’s data. Not very satisfactory.
A third example is the problem that data protection officers—each school nominates one—as you might imagine, are struggling to try and understand and keep up with this blizzard of new technology and new tools. There are more and more sophisticated ways of, in theory, giving children a good education, underwritten by hideously long and complex terms and conditions, which I suspect even an artificial intelligence tool would have a problem making any sense of.
An example would be perhaps one of our best known technology companies, Google. It has a very successful edtech business called Google Classroom. Google, as is its wont, packages different Google products together in the same package. Within Google Classroom, you have Google Maps, which I am sure most of your Lordships are familiar with and will use occasionally. Let us assume you are doing a geography project using Google Classroom and, as part of that, you decide to go into Google Maps to use its capability. The minute the child clicks on Google Maps, he or she loses the data protection provided by Google Classroom, which allows Google Maps to harvest all of their data.
That is a real life current example of what is happening in plain sight. Data protection officers are not going to be aware of that, neither are headmasters, students or parents. It seems compelling that the people who should be most aware of that are the Government, the Information Commissioner and the bodies which are there to protect children and guide schools through this extraordinarily difficult complex morass of these competing technologies which, quite rightly to some extent, the Government are encouraging schools to take advantage of. But beware of what you encourage without understanding exactly what it is you are recommending.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when it comes to technology, I think I have a slightly different relationship to it, although the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, may even go beyond me for this. We need it to operate in the modern world. I have said before several times on this Bill that I am dyslexic. I cannot produce a one-page document that is in a readable form in any sort of format unless I use voice dictation. The relationship with technology changes.
If you want to make people independent and they are, in this case, dyslexic—dyspraxics might use the same technology in a slightly different way—you must make sure information is available to them and they can function with it. Having said that, the second part of this is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, that there should be safeguards within it. These things actually go hand in glove. You should have something that allows people to function in the modern world. When you are independent and interacting with a computer, you have to put the correct information in for the computer to function; you have to actually know what you are doing. A balance needs to be achieved.
There is a move to use systems which are built into computers, as opposed to bolt-on bits for educational support. In certain cases, which the Minister is aware of, schools decide to use the free bit of tech as opposed to purchasing it. But the free bit of tech is there to advertise; otherwise it would not be there. There must be a commercial advantage for somebody to provide you with a free bit of tech.
The balancing structure the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, puts forward here is essential to allow those like me who need this technology to carry on using it. We are talking about schoolchildren here, but there will be no shortage of people who will need it in the future and we are identifying more and more all the time. I hope we can strike a balance and make sure we get further forward into it.
The same is true—I am sure we are going to hear about smartphones being the devil’s work—for smart- phones, as it is the information on the smartphone we are talking about. If you can ban social media sites on smartphones and you can block them, they merely become a platform you can fill with other technology.
This is as the Minister gets an answer by using her smartphone. I hope we will get a more balanced approach to this, because it is not all bad, and not all good, it just needs to be used correctly, and using safeguards is something we have not really got our heads around. I am sure most of the commercial companies did not come in with this as their first priority, they just came in as commercial companies. The fact that they said they were platforms and did not need to worry about this is now coming back to bite them. However, I hope there is a balanced approach and a sensible way that we can get the best out of technology.
State Pensions: Canada Free Trade Agreement
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
If I have not said it before, I assure the noble Viscount that actually the two are separate: social security arrangements linking to pensions are separate from free trade agreements. I think I alluded to that in one of my answers, but let me make it completely clear.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
Last Thursday, I was in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe as part of the UK delegation. A group of Canadian parliamentarians very kindly invited a group of the UK members to lunch, and noble Lords may guess what the subject of the lunch was. I was sitting opposite a Senator who launched into a diatribe about the pensioner situation in Canada, and on my left was a female MP from an agricultural constituency who was bemoaning the fact that Canada imports a certain amount of British beef but is unable to export any beef to us at all. So, whatever the Minister and his department may think, there is indeed a very strong connection in the minds of the Canadian Government between the two.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Yes, and I understand how they might wish to make that connection, but I reiterate again that we see no connection. In fact, the agreements that have been put in place in the past have been social security agreements. I also say gently to the noble Lord that the agreement between the EU and Canada is not dissimilar to the current agreement between the UK and Canada.
Supporting Disadvantaged Families
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
My Lords, I will respond first to the points raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock, and then cover the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Janke. I am sorry that the audio of the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, was not at all good. If I do not answer all her questions, I will go through Hansard tomorrow and make sure that she receives a written answer.
I am grateful that both noble Baronesses welcomed the Statement. Let me say right at the start that the Government much admire Marcus Rashford’s passion and commitment and are proud to have provided this invaluable support. I note the hopes of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for Marcus Rashford’s next campaign.
She also mentioned the comments about parents who use their benefits for purposes other than we would wish. We do not associate ourselves with those remarks. We are only too aware and appreciative of the difficult circumstances in which some parents find themselves at the moment. We are delighted that the hospitality industry came into its own and are glad that it was in a position to give extra help.
I am well aware that earlier at Questions, the noble Baroness was underwhelmed by my response about legacy benefits. I will try to be a little more helpful. Back in March, when there were no arrangements such as the furlough in place, UC had to take the strain until those schemes came online. The Government were trying to cushion those who had had a fall in income because they were made unemployed, or their earnings dropped, due to Covid-19. They were not trying to provide a general uplift in benefits. Those who were newly signed on to universal credit did so because they had seen a significant drop in their income, whereas those on legacy benefits had not seen the same fall.
Moving on to what we have done, we have announced a £170 million Covid winter grant scheme, to make sure that families get the help they need. We are giving this to councils because they are best placed to understand their communities. They know the most vulnerable children and families who need this money. As the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, said, this is being done on a per-head-of-population basis, according to the deprivation indices.
We are also investing £220 million more than existing funding allocated to the programme. This will mean that children eligible for free school meals will have the option to join a holiday time programme that provides healthy food and funds activities during the summer, Christmas and Easter holidays. I am afraid I am not able to comment on more than that timeframe. I will write to the noble Baroness about why the Healthy Start payments will not start until April 2021.
On the holiday activities and food programme, much has been said about the speed at which it has been introduced and whether it was a reaction, but I will say that we have been piloting this initiative and trying to work out how best to deliver it. This was not a knee-jerk response or something we thought we had better get on and do; it was something we piloted and tested. We made sure that, when we announced it, we knew that it would work. Since the summer, 50,000 children have benefited from the holiday activities and food fund, and a further 2,500 additional breakfast clubs have been started.
Will all children in England be eligible for a place on a HAFF programme? The programme will make free places available to children eligible for free school meals in their local authority for a minimum of four hours a day, four days a week, six weeks a year. This will cover four weeks in the summer and a week’s worth of provision in each of the Easter and Christmas holidays. As I have said before, local authorities have the flexibility to decide how to do this and how to use the money.
As I expected and I understand, there has been a call for the £20 uplift to be extended to legacy benefits, and I have been very clear about the Government’ position on this. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, raised the issues of the savings threshold, the two-child limit, the benefit cap and advances into grants. I have made clear that the Government do not have any plans at the moment to change those things, and, as my Secretary of State said in the other place,
“advances are actual grants to people—they are just the phasing of universal credit payments over the year”—
and they are repayable within a year—
“and soon to be over two years if that is what claimants want.”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/11/20; col. 642.]
We are listening and extending the time.
Where we have been doing the local pilots, there has been extensive discussion on interfacing with local authorities. I understand that the Government have written to all the chief executives of the local authorities, and, at this stage in the proceedings, the announcement and commitment have gone down very well. I am afraid I cannot tell the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, how much it is per head because it will be up to local authorities to say where the money goes and spend it most effectively.
Understandably, the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, raised the point about local authorities and underfunding. We are giving councils unprecedented support during the pandemic: a package of £6.4 billion so far. We recognise that there will be individual councils with unique circumstances, and we encourage them to approach MHCLG to discuss their future financial position.
Before I close this part of the questioning, I will make the point that Covid has certainly made life very difficult for people—nobody is trying to ignore that—but, underlying this, we believe that parents are responsible for their children. It is not the state’s job to take that responsibility, other than in these very difficult times, where we are trying to do everything we can. One of the areas I have responsibility for is the Child Maintenance Service. You would not believe the extent to which people try to get out of their responsibilities to pay for their children. We are working very hard to get this money back. As it stands, there are 130,000 children who are owed £381.3 million, and I am doing everything I can to get that money to children because it would make a huge difference to their lives.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
We now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.
Covid-19: Over-60s
Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
On the noble Lord’s first point, I will need to write to him and clarify that answer. Secondly, the Government have recently announced their plan for jobs, doubling the number of work coaches and putting £150 million into the flexible support fund. The Government are also offering people all manner of support services. We are not writing anybody off and we are going to turn every stone to get people back to work.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.