Mental Health: Children and Young People

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I want to look at mental health in the context of schools. Before I do, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hale, on her maiden speech. She is wearing a butterfly brooch, as opposed to a spider, and I feel more relaxed seeing that. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Russell on his speech. I thought it was very honest, and perhaps brave of him, to reference his own family and his daughter in an open Chamber.

I will give two brief examples before I turn to children. Four years ago, as part of Learn with the Lords, I went to speak to some secondary pupils at a school in Cheshire. The school was on a large council estate. I went into the school and the head sort of pushed me off with one of her teachers, and so I went in and spoke to the pupils. When I came out, the head asked me if I would like a cup of tea, and I said yes. I got into her office and she just burst into tears. I did not see it coming and I did not know what to do. She just stood there crying, so I naturally gave her a cuddle. She pulled herself together and said, “I’m really sorry about that. I have just had a letter from Ofsted telling me that we are a failed school, and I don’t know how to tell my staff. My staff are so hard-working. This is a very difficult circumstance for the school and I just don’t know what to do.”. We talked it through, and that made it clear to me that when we talk about mental health in schools, we should think about the teaching and non-teaching staff as well.

Interestingly, a friend of mine is head teacher of a three-form entry primary school of more than 500 pupils in a very deprived part of Liverpool. I asked—I will call him by his first name—Andrew how he is coping in his community. He said, “Well, I see my job not as a head teacher but as a social worker, quite honestly”. I turned to the subject of mental health and how he supports the pupils in that school. He said that from his school budget, he is able to spend £10,000 on one person to support the probably hundreds of pupils in his school who need mental health support. He said that the problem is that professionals are in high demand and other schools will pay more to poach them. He said, “I am lucky to get somebody to stay with me for a year”. That is a major problem. If we are to support pupils, children and staff in schools, we will need to be sure that professionals are available to do that and that they will not suddenly leave, leaving disappointed pupils and a case load of other children for somebody else to deal with.

My noble friend Lord Allan mentioned the second problem we face in education. There are literally—this is no exaggeration—hundreds of thousands of children missing from our school registers. They are missing because they were at home during Covid, they came back to school and they could not cope. They went back to their parents, mainly in deprived communities, and said, “Mum, dad, I don’t want to go to school. I can’t cope”. “Oh, stay at home. We will have home education”, they were told. As we know, home education is not registered. After a brief period, those children increasingly do no home education at all.

Imagine the strain that puts on the parent and the mental problems it will create for those children in the future. We can see that in the published figures and the increasing numbers of children who are permanently excluded from school. We have hundreds of thousands of children missing from our school registers, and there are even children who have been put on education healthcare plans who are permanently excluded from school, so we cannot implement those plans. That does not seem in the best interests of our pupils’ education.

Why has the number of children with mental health problems in school increased? Perhaps we have always had children with mental health problems in our schools but have never recognised or realised it. Perhaps we thought, “This is a disruptive child” or “This is a child with behavioural problems”. Thankfully, that is not the case now.

We know why there has been such a dramatic increase: Covid was one reason. I was also interested in my noble friend Lord Allan’s comments on social media, but the pressures of it—of having to respond, and the potential bullying—all create mental anguish and problems.

Our school system does not help. We are the most tested country in the world. We subject our children and young people to more tests than any other country does. Imagine the pressure that puts on young children. Imagine the pressures of Ofsted: I mentioned the example of the head teacher I met, and we know the tragic circumstances of the head teacher who took her own life as the result of an Ofsted inspection. All those pressures are happening at schools, with the high grades that schools require their pupils to achieve. What happened to the enjoyment of school? What happened to discovery and fun in school? It is all focused on a results outcome.

We name and shame. We put banners outside schools saying, “We are a good school”. In schools that do not have that banner, do parents and children feel a sort of anguish as a result? Our education system is not conducive to people’s well-being.

As has been said, we need to ensure that teachers are properly trained. As I have said on so many occasions, I do not think that Teach First, which takes a graduate, gives them a few weeks’ intensive training and then puts them in a school with a mentor, is the best possible way to train a teacher. It took me three years and when I started teaching, I was still learning. There needs to be an understanding of child development, for example, and of how to identify special educational needs. Part of that training should also include an understanding and recognition of mental health problems.

Finally, we need to support parents. We also need parents to understand what they can do to support their children. They need to bring routine to their children’s lives, to talk to their children, to ask how they are doing, to encourage them and be able to speak to them.

Mental health is a very serious issue in education and schooling. If we think that we can just put in a few million pounds here and make a promise there, it will not go away. We need dedicated, well-trained professionals in our schools who know what they are doing and how to support those pupils.

Health Promotion Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Whips for allowing me to speak despite my late arrival. I perhaps needed healthcare when I arrived: I left Liverpool on the 7 am train, which was supposed to take two hours but took two hours and 45 minutes, and my dash from Euston station got my heart going. I also thank my noble friend Lord Addington for this important Private Member’s Bill. Given the comments from noble Lords, it seems to have support right across the House and I hope the Government will take note of that.

Having heard all noble Lords speak, it seems that we have the strategy in front of us. I have listened to all the comments made and, along with the Select Committee, your Lordships seem to have come up with a strategy. We heard from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, about the importance of funding at a local community level; the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about recapturing the streets; the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about schools and opening schools—I shall come to education in a moment; and my noble friend Lady Randerson. A couple of days ago, she said to me, “I’m going to talk about a very niche area”, because I wanted her to wind up for my party. I say to my noble friend that it is not a niche area; that is what we should all be doing, not just in Wales, where it has been done, but right across the UK. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, was very brave and honest in his comments about apathy from government. It is not just the current Government; I think we have seen apathy from all Governments in this regard.

A report was published today by the Sutton Trust—which regularly does surveys of opinion and polling on education matters—about the impact of the rising cost of living on pupils. One of its interesting comments was that, in state schools, 74% of teachers have seen an increase in pupils who are unable to concentrate or are tired in class, and 67% saw more students with behavioural issues. There are lots more comments in that report. If we dug down a bit deeper, we would find that the majority of those students come from poor backgrounds or disadvantaged homes. One of my concerns is that, if I look at my home city of Liverpool—a number of noble Lords spoke about this issue—the facilities are mainly geared to a handful of sports. For example, football, in the main, predominates; I do not see hockey pitches or netball courts there. It is also very unfair to women, as the facilities are mainly for men. If you go to other facilities in the local cricket clubs or tennis clubs, you see—I never know what the correct term to use is—very few young people from ethnic backgrounds and very few from disadvantaged backgrounds. We have to open sport up to those people. We have to make sure that people from disadvantaged backgrounds go to those clubs and are welcome at them, and we have to have the facilities.

I have often thought that if we want to change the way we do things in sport, we cannot just sit there, waiting and hoping that somebody coming from Norris Green council estate will come to the club. We have to create a link for them and schools are best placed to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, suggested the importance of schools operating Saturday clubs, but I think we also need outreach work for those young people. Imagine if those young people were visited, encouraged and taken to those facilities, because transport and getting to them is a huge issue—those figures that I just read out would be different. The best way to deal with mental health is to be physically engaged in activities. The best way to deal with the problems of disadvantage is to get people into sport, and we are not doing that. That is a great shame.

During Covid, we saw a dramatic decline in the number of children from disadvantaged backgrounds attending schools; many have not gone back to school. They have said to their parents, or parent, “I don’t want to go to school. I’ve got problems, and I want to stay at home”, and the parent has then used the excuse of home education, or home tuition, to keep them at home. Thousands of children from disadvantaged backgrounds are “home educated”, but they are not—they are just languishing at home. Again, imagine if we could involve those children in sport, using our schools and encouraging them. We would see a huge change.

I wish my noble friend Lord Addington well with the Bill. He has huge support across the House, and I am sure he will score many goals.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall respond to the injunction from the Front Bench and speak for less than two minutes. I had not planned to intervene in this debate, but I was provoked by my noble friend Lord Reay, with whom I find myself in respectful disagreement, and further provoked by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

Listening to my noble friend’s speech took me back 42 years. It was like Groundhog Day, because in March 1980 I had to sit through a speech lasting more than one hour by Ivan Lawrence on fluoridation. I was lucky because in 1985 he set a new record by speaking from 5.12 am until 9.35 am. I was refreshing my memory about what I said in response to the debate 42 years ago in just two paragraphs—I should explain that I was the Minister responsible at the time, when I said:

“I think I should first explain that fluoride occurs naturally in most water supplies, sometimes at a satisfactory level for the prevention of dental decay. Fluoridation consists merely of the adjustment to the optimum level for dental protection—one part per million in temperate climes—of the fluoride content of those water supplies that are deficient in it naturally. When water containing the optimum level of fluoride is consumed during the years of tooth formation, the protection conferred in childhood continues during adult life.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/1980; col. 792.]


I wound up:

“Finally, as my right hon. Friend indicated last January”—


that was January 1980—

“it remains the Government's view—like that of their predecessors for many years—that extensive trials throughout the world have shown that fluoridation safely and effectively reduces the prevalence of dental caries—one of the commonest diseases and one which has lifetime consequences for general and dental health.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/1980; col. 799.]

Since that time, government policy has not been delivered, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, explained. Initially it was the area health authorities that did not do it, and now it is local authorities. It is now imperative that government policy is delivered, and that is why I wholeheartedly support these clauses in the Bill.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on Amendments 224 and 261 and share my views on fluoridisation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Reay, that it is a pity we did not have a proper full debate on this matter.

There is a real problem among young children, particularly those in deprived communities, who have increasing levels of bad teeth—dental decay. You would think that as a result of that situation we would be trying to do something more practical about it, yet we see dental inspections in schools decreasing. When I was first a head teacher, the dental services would come in twice a year to inspect children’s teeth and would give a little note to the parents so they could go to their dentist. The second problem we face is that, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, you cannot find an NHS dentist, particularly in a deprived area, for love nor money. That is a problem for families that cannot afford to use a private dentist, even if one was available.

When I was leader of the council in Liverpool, all political parties together—I have to tell my colleagues—decided against fluoridation, so we took the view that perhaps there was a different way of doing it. We were setting up the network of children’s centres in the early 2000s. We therefore made dental health in the nought to five age group one of the highest priorities in the city council’s strategic plan. We also issued additional guidance to our primary schools, asking them to make encouraging better dental health a higher priority. As a result, 10 years later in 2013, the British Dental Association’s 10-yearly survey showed that a reduction of 28% in caries had been achieved in Liverpool’s schools. The targeted approach achieved an outcome double that identified in the York review as the average caries reduction from fluoridation. We will also have helped many children to develop lifelong good personal dental hygiene habits, which is a crucial part of the strategy.

Whether we have fluoridation or not, we need to be absolutely sure that the journey we are going on is correct. In the meantime, we should look at other ways. We should also look at what our colleagues in Scotland have been doing with their Childsmile project, which has been shown to be safer, less wasteful and more effective, and better value for money. I hope that at some stage we will revisit this issue and have a much longer and more considered debate.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, this group rightly began with an amendment about adequate provision in dentistry. As we have heard, there is currently a massive shortfall in provision of NHS dentists and indeed dentists as a whole, so much so that a charity called Dentaid, which normally works in the third world, is now working in Dewsbury and Batley—and possibly in other parts of the country that I am not aware of—because people cannot get free dentistry. The situation is made worse by the backlog of treatment caused by the pandemic, whereby dentists were at first unable to see patients and later had to reduce the number of aerosol-producing treatments they could carry out each day.

I have no doubt that the condition of the nation’s teeth has deteriorated during the past couple of years. Nearly 1,000 dentists left the NHS between 2020 and 2021, according to the BDA. However, problems with access to NHS dentistry predate the pandemic. Government spending on dental services has fallen by a third in real terms in the last decade, and the £50 million one-off injection of funding announced recently will barely make a dent in the unprecedented backlog that NHS dentistry now faces.

However, it is also well proven that fluoride, however administered, can strengthen tooth enamel and help teeth to resist decay. The 2018 report from Public Health England made that clear and did not report adverse effects. In Clauses 147 and 148, the Government intend to ensure that the whole country has access to drinking water with at least 1 milligram per litre of water, the level believed to be most effective in reducing tooth decay without the unwanted effects mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Reay, and without waiting for local authorities to initiate schemes. I have to say that I believe Public Health England rather than the noble Lord.

I am always in favour of prevention and of reducing health inequalities, and it is claimed that this measure would do both, but there are some issues which I wish to probe. Currently only two areas in the country, Hartlepool and Braintree, have the optimum level of naturally occurring fluoride in their water. Other areas, covering about only 10% of the population, mainly in the north-east and Birmingham, already have schemes initiated by the local authority. I accept that a number of costly and bureaucratic barriers have been identified to more local authorities initiating such schemes, and I understand these clauses are an attempt to overcome them by making national regulations. These would remove some of the consultation costs from local authorities. However, some local authorities are reluctant to give up their local autonomy on this issue and believe their residents should be consulted before fluoridation occurs. This must be considered.

I have some questions for the Minister, which fall into two categories. The first is about costs and where they fall. We are told in the impact assessment that current schemes will not be affected, and existing and future capital costs will continue to be borne by the Department of Health and Social Care. What will be the additional burden on the funding of the Minister’s department of bearing the capital costs for every area in the country? I understand that regulations will allow for future costs to be shared by his department with water companies. What impact is that expected to have on the water bills paid by households, since the companies will undoubtedly try to pass it on to customers?

Water companies can well afford to pay these costs themselves, rather than take the money from the health budget. This is clear from the eye-wateringly high earnings of their leading directors. We know from a briefing from Yorkshire Water that the costs can be considerable. A few years ago, it did a feasibility study when only one area—Hull City Council—was looking into fluoridation. At the time, it estimated the capital cost to be £1.6 million to £2 million and the annual operation costs to be approximately £330,000 per year. These costs would have fallen on Public Health England and the local authority at the time, but under the new proposals they would be covered by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Over recent years, capital investment in water and sewerage services has been covered just by income from water bills, but investment in infrastructure has not been adequate, since we still have raw sewage being discharged into water courses and leaks wasting water at an unacceptable level. So, we can expect the companies to accept some of the cost of fluoridation themselves, without passing it on to the customer.

Can the Minister also say what is the plan for regular measurement of the fluoride content of water, and at what point in the delivery journey will it occur? What will this cost, and where will the cost fall? Will the Government allow companies to pass this cost on to the consumer too, although they can clearly afford to absorb it? The reason I ask is that water companies share water all the time and there is a possibility that, without frequent monitoring, the fluoride content delivered to customers could turn out to be either too high or too low to be effective.

The second category of question concerns what other proposals for reducing the incidence of tooth decay have been considered by the Government, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Storey. I have dealt with the availability of NHS dentistry, but it is excess sugar and acids in the diet that cause tooth decay. Sadly, poor diet is a major problem, particularly among poorer children, for whom the most common reason to be admitted to hospital is the need for complex extraction of rotten teeth. Fluoride can, of course, can be administered in other ways: either applied by the dentist or by regular use of fluoride-containing toothpaste—fortunately, most toothpastes contain fluoride. However, many children eat too much sugar, drink too many acidic fizzy drinks and do not brush their teeth regularly.

As my noble friend said, there used to be a school dentistry service to check for problems, and dental nurses used to visit nurseries and primary schools to teach good dental hygiene. I have myself sat in on such a session and it was excellent, but I do not believe it happens any longer. Have the Government costed a return to these schemes? As for diet, we will be dealing with that in a later group of amendments. So, while accepting the potential benefits of what is proposed, I ask the Minister to assure the House of the cost-effectiveness of the measures, explain the impact on family budgets and tell the House what other measures are being considered to achieve the same ends, which we all want to see: better and more equal dental health.

Clinical Negligence Claims

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the increase in the value of clinical negligence claims, which are expected to cost £8.3 billion from incidents in 2019-20.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

The costs of clinical negligence are rising at an unsustainable rate, eating into resources for patient care. Annual cash payments have quadrupled in the last 15 years to £2.2 billion in 2020-21. That is equivalent to 1.5% of the NHS budget and these costs are forecast to continue rising. This is despite our substantial safety programmes. The Department of Health and Social Care is working intensively across government to address these issues.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I have raised this issue every year and have heard a similar response from the Minister sitting there every year. When a child is born severely disabled, the parents have to fight to get compensation or money to be able to look after that child. That can often take years. Does the Minister agree with the former Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, that we should look at the Swedish model in which, if a child is born severely handicapped, the money is made available straightaway and the parents do not have to wait for the courts to provide support?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Government have looked at a number of different schemes from abroad. It is always very important to learn from good and bad practice, but what happens in a number of those cases is that the costs of compensation end up increasing. So We are looking at various solutions.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Local COVID-19 Alert Level) (Very High) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I speak on this statutory instrument as a Liverpool city resident and, for eight years, the leader of its city council. Liverpool’s people have a strong sense of community and justice, and what is fair and right. If there is a wrong against the city and its people, they will always join together to fight that wrong— as our Prime Minister has found, to his cost. The agreement hammered out by Boris Johnson and the city’s regional mayor to put Liverpool in tier 3 was tough and has major consequences for the economy of the city region and the jobs of its people. Liverpool has seen cases of Covid-19 rise and rise, although not to the highest in the country. Intensive care units at Liverpool’s main hospitals are now at 95% capacity.

The deal hammered out by the Prime Minister and Labour’s mayor Rotheram is certainly tough; it has put Liverpool City Region as the only region in tier 3, with all the restrictions that entails. This puts a real strain on the whole community and its cohesion, with families separated, people’s jobs and livelihoods lost or put at risk and the city’s economy in danger of going back to the 1980s. Given the severity of the situation, the people of Liverpool are entitled to ask questions and expect straight, honest replies.

Why was Liverpool put in tier 3 when areas of the country with a higher rate of infection were not? What does the Chief Medical Officer mean when he says that these tough restrictions will not be sufficient without tougher local action? Will we get the resources to have a proper test and trace system in place, as the current system has badly let us down? Does the Minister not agree that it would be sensible for all the schools to have a two-week half-term now? Liverpool has 70,000 university students, the majority living in residential communities. Does the Minister consider there is a case for students to study online from home? How many so-called Covid marshals have been recruited in the region? Finally, travel restrictions are tough: they advise not travelling out of the city region and certainly not staying overnight. Are the Government making arrangements so that the city region’s MPs can work and vote from home?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I for one was in the main delighted with the education part of the Queen’s Speech. Its opening statement,

“To ensure every child has access to a high-quality education”,


and the statement that

“A great education is fundamental to the success of children, their families and our communities, as well as the success of our country”


set the right tone. The severe funding issues that schools and colleges have faced is now being addressed, and we must never allow schools to face such a financial crisis again. The focus on further education and technical education was welcome. At long last, the Cinderella of our education service is finally going to the ball.

I have said many times that the most important resource in our education system is the quality of our teachers. Good teachers inspire, motivate and drive ambition and learning forward. Good school and college leaders create places of learning where teachers and their pupils thrive. Yet we have a very serious teacher recruitment crisis. The Department for Education forecasts that, over the next six years, pupil numbers are set to increase by almost 20%. The number of children in classes of 36 or more is increasing at an alarming rate. Many schools across England regularly have classes of over 40, and only 80% of the number of secondary trainees were recruited last year. We are in the middle of a significant teacher shortage. We must prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe.

The days when a teaching career was seen as the most aspirational in society appear to be over. However, in other European countries, teachers are highly valued. We need the best minds teaching young people, from the nursery to the sixth form, so why are we experiencing a recruitment crisis? Is the answer better salaries? That must go some way to attracting those who want to teach, but it is not clear that more money will attract more teachers, considering the impact that bursaries have had thus far.

Teachers working today feel undervalued. When I speak to teachers, the main issue they cite is not the money but the workload. Stressful teachers do not make for productive or happy teachers. If we are to achieve the Queen’s Speech peroration, we need well-trained, well-paid, highly motivated and highly regarded teachers. Without them, class sizes will continue to increase, subject specialist shortages will continue to grow, and the drop-out rate of teachers will accelerate.

We hear a lot about inspections and testing. Of course schools need to be inspected and children tested so that we can find out how to support and help children, but it is about how we do this so that schools and teachers are less stressed, more valued and more productive. It is my hope that in this new Parliament the Government will be less dogmatic in their approach to education. Let us recognise that we have a varied system in the types of school that provide for our children, and that maintained community schools should not be seen as educational pariahs waiting to be picked off and converted into academies as soon as they put an academic foot wrong.

By the way, it is interesting that maintained community schools in England outperformed academies and free schools in the national exams taken at the end of year 6. Department for Education figures show that last summer, among pupils taking stage 2 standardised tests in maths and English, known as SATS, those in maintained community schools on average performed better than those in academies. Interestingly, free schools—the Government’s flagship means of opening a new school—also compared poorly with maintained community schools. It is worth noting, however, that the gap relating to pupils whose first language is not English has almost disappeared, which is well worth celebrating.

I want to touch briefly on a couple of other issues that are not covered in the Queen’s Speech but are of huge importance: alternative education and academic integrity. The Minister will be aware that there has been a 50% surge in permanent exclusions from schools in England. These children are placed in alternative provision, but many of those alternative providers are unregistered and therefore uninspected. There are often appalling practices in child safeguarding and pupil registration that go completely unchecked. Two hours a day on an iPad is not education. It is unacceptable in the 21st century that public money should be used to pay these unregistered providers. Shame on central government and local authorities for allowing that to happen. It is not surprising that the children who are being recruited into gangs and county-lines crime may be a significant factor in the increasing levels of knife crime.

We are proud of our universities; we boast some of the finest in the world. It is vital that we do all in our power to safeguard their academic integrity. So why are we allowing companies to help students to cheat? The growing presence of essay mills and contract cheating is alarming. We should make sure that these activities are closed down. The damage that they are doing to higher education is extremely dangerous. No wonder 45 vice-chancellors and heads of organisations in UK higher education wrote to Damian Hinds urging that action be taken against the essay mill companies.

I welcome the rhetoric in the Queen’s Speech, and I hope it is matched by the reality. Our children are our future. We must make sure that every child really does matter.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I want to confine my remarks to the area of education, of which the Queen’s Speech says basically, “Motherhood and apple pie”. Could anyone have cause to disagree with the statement that all young people will,

“have access to an excellent education, unlocking their full potential and preparing them for the world of work”?

Perhaps the Minister will shed some light on the actual Bills that the Government will bring forward to make that happen. I hope that it will not be a further narrowing of the curriculum—we have seen how that stifles creative talent—and that it is not the further expansion of unaccountable free schools, when many parts of the country are urgently in need of building new schools to provide for much needed school places. Can we hope that the important Augar report on 16 to 18 year-olds will be translated into a Bill? After all, it was very close to the heart of the former Prime Minister. Can we also hope that the Government will bring forward changes to the EBacc?

By narrowing the curriculum, we have seen creative subjects decline in the state system year on year while flourishing in the independent and private schools sector. This year, we have seen GCSE entries decrease even further in design and technology, drama, media/TV studies and music at a time when the creative industries have become hugely important to our economy. Employers are consistently clear that the biggest drivers of success for young people are attitudes and attributes such as resilience, enthusiasm, and creativity. As the Edge Foundation says, young people need,

“a truly broad and balanced curriculum, linked directly to the real world and focused explicitly on developing the wide range of skills required to succeed in the twenty-first century”.

It has always fascinated me how Governments of the day and so-called spin doctors manipulate certain situations to persuade the media to follow a particular news agenda. Do your Lordships remember when Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, told us repeatedly how badly as a country we were performing in the international league tables in maths, English and science? They are called the PISA tables—the Programme for International Student Assessment. Mr Gove used the PISA tables constantly to show how badly we were performing against our overseas competitors. Finland and Singapore were heralded as shining examples. Our failure in the PISA tables became the raison d’être for Mr Gove’s cataclysmic changes in education policy. So what about looking at the PISA tables, 10 years on, to see how we are performing? Singapore still heads the tables in maths, science and reading, and Finland is still among the top European countries. In fact, 14 European countries outperform us in maths and 13 in reading. Over that 10-year period, the UK saw schools drop in all those subjects. Need I say more? I do not think we will hear much from the Government about the PISA tables any more.

Never mind our failure in the international tables, figures released by the Department for Education reveal that, this summer, 35.6% of pupils did not get grade 4 or above in GCSE English and maths, while half—57%—failed to get a grade 5, which is considered a strong pass. That 35.6% of pupils did not achieve a grade 4 might not mean anything to noble Lords, but it means that 190,000 young people were judged to have fallen short after 12 years of teaching. At the other end of the education system, the Department for Education also revealed figures that show that over a quarter—28.2%—of children are already falling behind in their education by the age of five.

Time is always tight in these debates, and I want to quickly mention two other issues that are close to my heart. Children in care and children who have struggled with schools and schooling are often placed in what is called alternative provision. These are the most vulnerable people in our society, and they need all the support and protection that we can possibly give them. Yet a large number of these pupils are put in unregistered schools which, because they are unregistered, are not subject to inspection and scrutiny. In many of them, the most unacceptable educational practices take place, including for example a lack of proper child protection procedures. Why are we allowing this to happen? Why, for example, are local authorities placing as many as 2,600 pupils in these unregistered schools and paying for them to go there? Why is the Department for Education unable to say how many unregistered providers there are? And why do the Government not listen when their own chief inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, warns that inspectors and the Department for Education do not currently have the powers to shut down unregistered schools, even when they are breaking the law? Does the Minister agree that we should give them those powers?

Another area that I have been concerned about for a few years is essay mills and contract cheating. This is when students pay for their essay or dissertation to be written by someone else. It is a flourishing, multi-million-pound industry that preys on the vulnerability of students. The problem is growing year by year and affecting the academic integrity of our higher education system. When I put down an amendment during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Bill, I was assured by the then Minister, Jo Johnson, that the Government would try to deal with this problem by working with universities and the National Union of Students, and that if they failed, they would consider bringing in legislation. They have failed. The problem is getting bigger and bigger every year, with some 50,000 students using essay mills and contract cheating. More than 40 university vice-chancellors have written to the Education Secretary asking for essay mills to be banned. Will the Minister now give an assurance that these actions will be taken?

We all want all our children and young people to have the best possible education, and none should be left behind. When bringing forward legislation, I hope the Government will consider the important points that all your Lordships make in this debate.

Mental Health of Children and Young Adults

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for this debate and for her opening speech, which was fantastic.

As the Royal College of Psychiatrists says:

“A mental health crisis in our children is developing”.


So let me ask the Minister straight off: why then are we seeing a 3.7% fall in the number of child and adolescent mental health services providers in our schools?

The Government have responded to the mental health crisis in much the same way that most Governments react to problems or crises. The NHS Long Term Plan, which includes children’s mental health, is excellent. The Government have set targets in their Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. The Green Paper proposes to bring schools and NHS services closer together. Mental health support teams have been set up and pilot schemes rolled out. Champions have been appointed. Targets have been set. That is all very laudable, but we need action for all children and young people.

As we have heard, one in eight children and young people aged between five and 19 has a mental health disorder in England, and 400,000 children and young people are not getting any professional help or support at all. We can establish mental health champions in schools, train staff to be able to identify mental health issues and embed mental health in teacher training programmes, and it is vital that we do so, but if the resources are not there it is all for naught. It is like pulling a lever and it does not connect with anything. Nothing happens. If a child or young person is diagnosed with a mental health problem, we must have the resources to respond and to support them immediately.

The NHS Long Term Plan says:

“Mental health support for children and young people will be embedded in schools and colleges”.


The Government claim a success in that,

“We are delivering on our commitments to expand mental health services for children and young people”,


as set out in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. That may be true, if success is defined as 30% of those with mental health conditions being able to benefit from treatment and support, which is still less than one-third of those who need treatment. Could noble Lords imagine the headlines and the outcry if only 30% of people with serious heart conditions were being treated?

I go back to the NHS plan. The NHS will be funding new mental health support teams working in schools and colleges, which is welcome, but not until 2023—nearly five years from now. Only one-quarter, at most, of schools and colleges will have such a team. There is no indication of when, if ever, there will be a team in every school and college. Will the Government be encouraging schools to add a section to their school prospectus and website along the lines of, “Our academy is the only one in this area to have a Mental Health Support Team. If your son or daughter has a mental health problem, or you think that he or she may develop a mental health problem in the next five years, make this academy your choice”? While this idea is obviously ridiculous, what will the 75% of schools without a mental health support team be able to tell parents when a student needs support? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

The lack of robust data about the mental health of children and young people is a matter that should shame the Government and, indeed, all of us. The teenagers who were part of the last exercise in, I think, 2004 are now in their 30s. The Department of Health claimed repeatedly that there was not enough money to undertake a full-scale assessment, and undoubtedly money was tight. Another explanation of failure to collect robust data is that the Government were content for the true picture to remain a “known unknown”, because knowing the extent of the challenge would have proved uncomfortable and expensive.

The past decade has seen a whole range of new pressures on children and young people—we have heard some of them from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall—many of which contribute to more of them suffering from mental health issues. The internet, which admittedly has opened up the world to children and young people, also has a dark side. The ubiquity of social media can lead to children being bullied by their friends or groomed by predators. Social media also promotes an image of perfection to which no ordinary person can aspire. Those who have a poor image of themselves can easily find “help” in self-harming and encouragement to starve themselves. All of this, of course, is available 24/7 since the internet never closes, even on bank holidays.

I would like to move from the macro picture to the micro picture. We have all read what reality is like for many mentally ill children and young people, with suicide a too common occurrence. I cannot imagine what it is like to have a son or daughter with a developing mental illness, for whom support only becomes available when a crisis occurs, and only then if you are a danger to yourself or others. For those acutely ill and needing in-patient treatment, a bed is often only available hundreds of miles away, which can make it almost impossible for family and friends to be in contact at the very time when these contacts are most needed.

Training school staff to spot the early signs of mental illness—and the new programme to train all sports coaches—is welcome. However, if there is not the support needed to follow up the issues identified, it will lead to even higher levels of frustration by those teachers and other professionals who work on the front line.

The need to provide better support services is universally acknowledged. Noble Lords will probably have seen from the Treasury minutes in the briefing pack that every single recommendation in the Public Accounts Committee report on the mental health of children and young people was accepted by the Government. Let us hope that the actions really will speak louder than the words.

In concluding, I would like to say a little about what should be done to try to promote well-being and good mental health among children and young people. In February, the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Health announced,

“one of the largest trials in the world to boost the evidence about what works to support mental health and well-being”.

This is a welcome development in prevention, and will be much more effective than even the most effective cures. However, what we really need is a study that looks at the multitude of pressures which contribute to mental illness and young people. This study could then make radical recommendations for strategies to minimise those pressures. We have heard about pressures of young people at universities and colleges, but there are pressures right—

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, we are tight for time. I would be grateful if your Lordships could keep an eye on the clock. Is the noble Lord about to conclude? The allocated time is six minutes.

[Lord Storey]

I have misjudged my time; I apologise profusely. I do not know where I got 10 minutes from, I must have been looking at the next debate. I will conclude now—my apologies.

Children and Young People: Obesity

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Walmsley for initiating this debate. It is interesting that in today’s press there are a number of articles on childhood obesity, including one on teaching pupils how to be healthy parents and one, which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, mentioned, on how sleep deprivation increases the risk of childhood obesity.

It is with considerable sadness that I rise to speak in this debate. In a perfect world such a debate would not be necessary. In a perfect world we would certainly not be discussing child obesity in England when in too many other countries children and young people are literally starving to death.

One of the most disappointing and weakest documents produced by this Government recently was Childhood Obesity: A Plan for Action, which was published in August 2016. It had been seriously diluted from what we had expected and had few teeth. It had that in common with too many children, who have few, if any, teeth left but far too many pounds—in weight, of course.

While we must do all that we can to educate children about eating proper meals, not snacking continuously, not drinking fizzy drinks and taking proper exercise, we cannot just leave it to children to make the right choices. From birth it is parents who set eating patterns for their children: patterns that can be in stone—not weight—at a very young age. If parents are not well informed about eating habits and exercise, how can they ensure that their children are neither overweight nor minus their teeth?

In addition to making sure that parents are properly educated, we should recognise that there are a number of other key influencers whose interest seems to lie in developing unhealthy eating habits purely for profit. How many of us have heard young children demanding the chocolate that is placed conveniently at trolley height at supermarket checkouts, or the bargain chocolate bars that are always on the counter in major newsagents? Can anyone have escaped those adverts for a fast-food chain that encourage you to play Monopoly to win a bigger burger? I assume Park Lane is a Big Mac slathered with tomato ketchup. How many big bags of fries do you have to eat to get an Xbox, which will ensure that you eat more chips while becoming more of a couch potato? I still have horrible memories of children in my family demanding another Happy Meal so they could collect yet another plastic figure.

By the time children get to school, the die—I use the term advisedly—is already cast. Running round the playing field and having your lunchbox inspected will have little effect if you have spent your early years consolidating a junk food diet. Too many young children’s diets are totally lacking in fresh fruit or fresh vegetables, and the chicken and fish will be covered in breadcrumbs and deeply fried.

Coincidentally, a series of papers was published today in the Lancet, dealing with nutrition and lifestyle in the pre-conception period and its importance for future health. To quote from the introduction:

“This Series … makes the case for preconception health as a key determinant of pregnancy success and next generation health”.


Earlier today I was in touch with Professor Judith Stephenson of the UCL Institute for Women’s Health, the lead author of the Lancet papers, who said:

“Mothers (and fathers) who have a healthy weight before becoming pregnant have smoother pregnancies and healthier children. Across the globe, obesity and poor nutrition are rife, but maternal motivation to improve health in the period before conception can be very strong. We call for better resources and leadership at all levels to help women achieve a healthy weight for the benefit of all family members”.


Keith Godfrey, professor of human development at the University of Southampton, said:

“Socioeconomic disparities are hugely concerning in the child obesity epidemic and scientific evidence points to more than 80% of these disparities arising around conception through parental smoking and obesity. Engaging with children and teenagers to promote preparation for healthy parenthood offers a real opportunity to reverse one of the most pressing problems of our time. If we grasp the opportunities in schools and communities we can improve the health of the next and future generations”.


If we start early enough and develop the principles and practice of healthy eating, the next generation will at least inherit a better lifestyle from their parents—an inheritance that is of course tax free. The obesity strategy that we expected was in fact a plan of action that in all honesty looks more like a plan of inaction. As we have heard today, there is an abundance of evidence about the extent of child obesity and its causes. The noble Baroness, Lady Mone, is right: we need to ensure that parents are educated. Sure Start centres are one way of educating young parents about the importance of a healthy diet for young children as they grow up. With 1,000 children’s centres gone, how many hundreds of thousands of young mothers, fathers and young children have not benefited from such advice?

We need a proper government-wide strategy that takes a co-ordinated approach to tackling obesity. A bit of education here, a bit of sugar tax there and a bit of preventive health now and again is not the answer. We need to look at some key factors. I am sure that if we do that we will see a real change.

I will end on the question of teeth. I am sure that the Health Minister is concerned about pressures on the National Health Service. We know that one-quarter of five year-olds get tooth decay and that 90% of that is preventable—nearly 26,000 young people being admitted to hospital. So I have three questions for the Minister. First, why do we not bring back dental inspections in schools? Secondly, when are we going to get the assessment on children’s centres? Thirdly, does he not think that we should go back to the days of two hours of timetabled sport in primary education?

Children and Young People: Mental Health Services

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I know that the noble Baroness speaks with deep experience and passion on this subject and I completely agree; it is about making sure that those children’s voices are heard. We recognise that the picture of fragmentation described in the CQC report is not good enough and that is one of things we are trying to fix. It is a historic issue and it cannot be done overnight but we are working on it.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the awareness is very important. Will the Minister ensure that mental health awareness is part of teacher training and part of the qualification of special needs co-ordinators? I have to correct him: psychotherapists are not the same as school psychologists and there has been quite a substantial reduction in the number of school psychologists who are available and able to identify mental health problems.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I will take the issue about the specifics of teacher training to colleagues in the DfE. I was talking about therapists in the broadest sense of the word: I think there is a recognition that we need more therapists of all kinds in all settings as we expand these services for young people.