Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Children are the fabric of the future, to paraphrase the excellent maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed. Legislating for the welfare of children is crucial, and we must take this opportunity to provide equal protection of children in law from assault. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health strongly supports such amendment. Its report last year showed that children who experience physical punishment were up to 2.6 times more likely to experience mental health problems and more than twice as likely to be victims of serious physical abuse. This is because the definition of “reasonable punishment” is unclear.

Last year, Worcestershire’s safeguarding review into the murder of nine year-old Alfie flagged up the difficulty in distinguishing

“between what is lawful and proportionate and what is harmful and abusive”.

The preceding year, after the death of Child AK, Norfolk’s review concluded that the current law was confusing by allowing a defence of reasonable chastisement in criminal prosecutions for assault. I was glad to hear others raise this and hope the House will support this overdue change. Scotland and Wales have already tackled this; giving children equal protection against being assaulted in the name of chastisement does not criminalise parents. The Scottish Government’s implementation group has not noticed a significant impact on work in the Procurator Fiscal Service or Police Scotland. Wales introduced a rehabilitative alternative to prosecution with no increased criminalisation of parents. We cannot leave the current legal confusion in place and leave children living in fear of common assault.

Ten years ago, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health called for a single unique identifier, using the NHS number, but we failed to get it into previous legislation. Sadly, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel reported that 485 children were affected by serious child safeguarding incidents in 2023-24 and the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care recently emphasised that a consistent identifier is essential for frictionless sharing of information between public agencies. So this clause is to be welcomed, but red flags must be rapidly acted on. I hope the Minister can tell us how, and how the process will be evaluated.

A unique identifier will help healthcare professionals quickly identify who has parental responsibility, especially for children in kinship care or with complex needs. This is especially important in emergency and palliative care, and the prevalence of children with medical complexity has risen almost threefold since 2000. Having kinship carers on the face of the Bill is welcome. Like any parent, they must be involved in decisions about their child, especially when the situation is critical and life-threatening. Sadly, parents in crisis at such times can feel inadequately listened to by clinicians and others.

There is a gap between the two parts of the Bill. This relates to bereaved children. No data is collected on the number of children bereaved of a parent or sibling, and half of bereaved children, young people and adults who spoke to the UK Commission on Bereavement said that they received little or no support from their educational setting after their bereavement. More than half of kinship carers said that their kinship children had mental health difficulties, often linked to bereavement. We must put well-being at the heart of education, especially for children who are bereaved, abused or vulnerable. We have work to do.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I was unable to speak at Second Reading and I will resist the temptation to make a Second Reading speech now. Rather, I wish to concentrate on Amendment 1.

Any consideration of a proposed purpose clause should take us all back to the Renton report, in which it was said that sometimes such clauses can be useful and sometimes they can be unnecessary, and that they should be used selectively and with caution. On one view, the scope and effects of this Bill are clear enough and there does not appear to me, at least, to be any complexity for which a purpose clause would help interpretation.

However, there is perhaps some value in this amendment, which uses the word “improve” three times, emphasising the intention of the Bill—and the Bill as amended in due course—to achieve improvement in the areas specifically mentioned, and not to maintain or simply tweak the status quo. For that limited reason, I would support Amendment 1.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, in responding I hope the Minister will be able to point out that the purpose of the Bill has a golden spine running through it, and that is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The different clauses should be able to read across to the convention, and wherever the child is and whatever group they are in—and we have lots of groups in this Bill—fate can be extremely cruel, and we know that every day around 127 children lose a parent.

Bereavement is a major issue and hits different groups in different places at different times and affects their outcomes. I hope that we will have a statement from the Minister in responding to this which is about the principle of what we are really trying to do for children across the whole nation, everywhere.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech, but I am probably fairly unique in this House in that I was brought up in a children’s home. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who is not in his place, and I have a joke that he got to prison and I ended up in a children’s home but we both somehow ended up here.

What I find lacking in the Bill is that I have never felt that it is dealing with children; it is dealing with administration, with very worthy things. I do not feel that, when I was in a children’s home, I would have benefited from the feelings in the Bill. It just does not seem to take me anywhere. One of the problems we have to face is the attitude of society to children.

I am not going to tell a long sob story, but I was extremely badly treated by my parents. A lot of people tried to help—teachers, social workers, neighbours—but there was an air of embarrassed indifference. People wanted to help but did not feel they could; they did not know how to. One of the things we have to get away from is the idea that it is someone else’s job. For about five years I was chair of an outfit called the association of Labour social workers. That was when I was in the Labour Party, incidentally, I say to friends on this side. One thing that struck me was how difficult their job is. One false move and you are condemned. You often look at a child as a social worker and think, “This child should be in care. I should be going to a magistrate”. But as you work your way up the food chain, caution comes in. It is not cruelty; it is caution. People say “Are you sure? We don’t want to be all over the Daily Mail. We have to be careful. We have to respect the rights of the parents”. This is legitimate, but I do not think we should imagine that there is some golden, secret, easy way of dealing with this. I have said in this House before that you cannot privatise compassion. Whatever you do and however much you say, “Let the private sector deal with this”, you cannot deal with the human and emotional cost.

I will mention the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He was leader of Sheffield City Council, of course, some time after I was in its care. If anyone wanted to see a local government machine which worked, it was the county borough of Sheffield. I was extraordinarily well looked after. They probably put me in the Labour Party for about 30 years, before I found my natural home.

Sheffield, under the formidable presence of Alderman Grace Tebbutt—I think only the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, will remember that name—ran the children’s homes in an extremely compassionate and direct way because she knew what was going on there. She knew quite a lot of the children. The lesson I took from that was that you have to respect the children. I was not an easy child by any means—any more than I am easy now.

One thing I will give a man called John Freeman and his assistant Mary Armitage, the director and deputy director of children’s services in Sheffield, was that they listened. They were prepared to listen to a 13 year-old child. That helped enormously, because I felt suddenly that I was valued. Someone wanted not only to hear what I wanted but to explain why it could not happen, to help it happen or, often, to half help it happen, because I had not understood the situation and they had. They also understood the need to listen in order to shape the outcome to the need. That is why intervening on this amendment is relevant—because that does not come through in the Bill, and I am not sure I have the expertise to bring it through, but I am willing to work with anyone who thinks they have.

The old children’s department network was a success. When I began my official career as the research officer for the Committee on One Parent Families, Baroness Lucy Faithfull, who was a Member of this House and knew an enormous amount about children, and Barbara Kahan—who never joined this House but was the children’s director for Oxford and a member of the Finer committee—helped inform us of what it felt like to be a child. That was missing. We had a lot of seminars with very well-meaning people—often men, I have to say—who told us what children wanted, but, until Lucy Faithfull came along, we had very little contact with children who were actually in care, to try to shape things for them.

So I say to the Minister—this is not a criticism but is meant as a help—that we must try, if we can, to reshape the Bill just slightly so that it brings the child to the fore, rather than the administration, because it is the children who, at the end, will be affected by the Bill. It is they who will, in years to come, either bless or curse us for what is in it. There will not be much from the officials—we will all have long passed away—but it is the children, some of whom are not yet born, who will be the recipients of the policies we end up with.

We are all people of good will here—including the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, behind me, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, whom I knew by repute when he was leader of Sheffield, although I had long left—and we try to do our best. We must now extend that to the Bill, so that we have done our best.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister may mention this in her response to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s question about the data task force, but I just wanted to mention the Cabinet Office Evaluation Task Force, which is tasked with improving and addressing data across every area of government. Obviously, it cannot do that with every area of government, so it picked 10 priority areas, one of which is children’s social care. I mention it in the context of the excellent amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, because it could make a huge far-reaching difference. If it were to be looked at, then perhaps speaking to the Cabinet Office might be useful.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, these clauses are going to be incredibly important to empower information sharing, but I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for having raised so many of the practical concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, has just asked for some objective criteria, but from my experience in general practice and, many years ago, in paediatrics, there did not seem to be a clear line very often—there were of shades of grey, an index of suspicion and a sense that something might not be right long before you could establish any objective evidence. The objective evidence sometimes came far too late.

I will never forget a child who, 50 years ago, had been dipped in boiling water. I was the admitting person in the A&E department as a junior doctor, having only just started in paediatrics. There were children admitted with injuries, and then when we went into it, we discovered that things had been going wrong for a long time previously. Later on, when I was on the health authority for Gwent, we had some tragic cases there, which I cannot disclose details of, but one of the recurring themes was that people had not put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle or connected the dots to realise what was happening.

So I worry that we will not ever be able to have absolute criteria; we have to allow discretion, which is what this amendment does. I note that subsection (7) of the new section states that:

“A disclosure of information … does not breach any obligation of confidence owed by the person making the disclosure.”

That is helpful, because, hopefully, you will see the person over and over again once you have an index of suspicion to try to ascertain what is going on before you trigger the referral, and the Bill says that each of those encounters must be documented. So you would document why you had not triggered at that point but you might trigger later.

It would be really helpful if, when the Minister responds to this debate, she can outline the way that the system is thought to work in practice and where the central repository of data will be. There is a concern that you can put data into a system, whatever the system is, but if you do not mine that data—if you do not have flags that come up that put the pieces together—you may get a lot of people, all saying, “Oh, but I reported it in”, and it goes into some kind of data black hole without really being joined up. There will need to be a responsibility for saying, “This looks like more than a one-off occurrence. There’s something going on here and it needs to be investigated”.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, my remarks on this group have shrunk somewhat, thanks to the Minister’s earlier reply, so this is really an opportunity for her to confirm and clarify some of her earlier comments in relation to the use of the NHS number, which is addressed through my Amendment 51, which I think shares the aims of Amendment 52, which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, presented in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, earlier.

The context for considering this group of amendments is the long debate that has run for many years about whether there should be a consistent identifier for children and, if so, what that number should be. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, has campaigned on this very actively over many years, so I am sure she is here with us in spirit.

I was very reassured to hear the Minister say that there would not be a database and therefore that we do not have to worry about some of the concerns surrounding ContactPoint and other similar projects today. As your Lordships’ House knows, the Children’s Commissioner and leading children’s charities all support this move and believe that a consistent identifier

“will enable a child to be identified with more confidence”

across the multiplicity of information management systems that we know exist and therefore allow information

“to be shared more efficiently and securely when consent has been received or a safeguarding decision has been made to do so”.

Rightly, the assumption in their statement is that is that information can be shared only with consent—or, to be fair, if a safeguarding decision has been made to do so, which implies that there is no consent. So obviously, this will apply in both cases.

My amendment would do two things. First, it would put in the Bill that the consistent identifier would be a child’s NHS number. Many commentators on the Bill have said that it is important to do this rather than leaving it to regulations, and we need to be clear that the Government are not tempted by another major IT adventure in this area. Secondly, it would allow the Secretary of State by regulations to make provision relating to the consistent identifier. Our intention is to get clarity in the Bill that it is the NHS number, but then give the Secretary of State the flexibility she needs to keep the approach up to date. I know that the Minister has said—I do not want to put words into her mouth—that the Government are exploring using the NHS number, and it looks like the front-runner. Those are definitely not the words she used. I wonder whether she could elaborate a little, to the extent that she feels able, on whether it is really the NHS number or whether anything else is realistically in contention. Therefore, if that pilot was not successful, how much time and money would this set us back?

In debates on earlier groups, other noble Lords mentioned the limitations of the NHS number. Of course, there are children who do not have one, including unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, but the Minister has already given a constructive way through that, and there are also adoptive children. I know there are real concerns that adoptive children should have a single NHS number that does not change. I felt there was a hopeful hint behind her words, but maybe she can expand on that. I think there have been cases where changing numbers and not having that history of a child’s health has not been in the best interests of the child.

It would also be good to hear the Minister’s reflections on the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Jackson about families who might be driven away from registering with a GP because of concerns about how their data might be used, thus preventing access to basic healthcare for their children. How real a risk does she believe that to be? Either way, we think that those risks just pale in comparison with those of another new IT project and a number created purely for these purposes. If I have understood correctly that the NHS number is the front-runner, could she expand a little more on the Wigan pilot? Is it the only pilot that the Government are intending to run? How long will it run for? Will there be others? Will they be evaluated? Can she give us any hint on a timeline? I assume there will be no wider rollout until that work is complete. With that, I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group and strongly congratulate the Government on having picked up the concept of a unique child identifier. I was part of the group, with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, when we did not get there on previous legislation, and we were told that one reason was that the Department for Education could not see how it could do that and link with health, so seeing the Department for Education involved is particularly cheering.

I will make a case quite strongly for the NHS number rather than anything else, partly because I think we need to learn lessons from other number systems. If we look just at hospital records, different hospitals have different numbers and then there is the NHS number, and that has resulted in all kinds of clinical muddles and potential errors. The other thing is that children move around. People do not stay in the same area all the time, and the NHS number moves with them. If they have one number and move to a new area and register with a GP, for example, and then go to register with a school, if there have been major concerns then eventually those case notes will come through and people will become aware.

Going back to my previous experience, sometimes we found that the families with the highest risk had multiple addresses, out of town and in different cities. The other advantage is that, although we have devolved healthcare systems, we have a unique NHS number so, if people move between Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, that number will persist. That is not a central database; it is simply saying that the number is there.

Children’s names change and their “known as” also changes. They may be known as another name but the number, a little like their genetic make-up, is fixed, which is really helpful. It will also avoid problems of lots of children having the same name, which is when muddles happen. I am from Wales, and we have a lot of people called David Jones and David Evans, and quite a few called David Williams, let alone Siân and Ceri. They are great names but, if you are trying to differentiate between them, you have to be really careful.

The final reason why I think this is particularly important is about transition and children who have learning difficulties and neurodiversity. Transition is an extremely difficult time for children. In those late teens, hormones are kicking in all over the place and all kinds of things are happening. Their relationships with the people who have been their carers through childhood change, and they can be at particular risk during those times, particularly during puberty if they have real learning difficulties.

I really hope that the pilot with the NHS number continues. When the Minister responds, it will be very helpful to know what kinds of numbers are being evaluated in those pilot areas—I hope there are more than one—so that the studies are sufficiently powered to be valid. Where have the objections come from? Who has not complied with being engaged? There may be some education needed to remove any sense of threat, because it will make safeguarding easier for people who have responsibility for children.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I was not going to intervene but, after hearing my noble friend, I cannot help but recall having to deal with some of the children of a man who, on inquiry, had had 11 sons by 11 different women. Because he was the sort of man he was, he insisted that each of them had his name.

--- Later in debate ---

I reiterate the point I made earlier that it is not necessary for everything to be determined before the NHS number—if it is to be that—could start to be used. We can have an incremental introduction of the NHS number. We do not need to wait until everything is sorted. I hope that, with those reassurances, noble Lords will not press their amendments.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

As the Minister was speaking, I was thinking that the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has been campaigning for this for a very long time. I hope that she will be able to confirm that her officials would have involved the royal college in any discussions over any difficulties and doubts, because I think it would want to be very helpful. It represents, of course, the group of doctors who end up seeing some of the most severely damaged children.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am pretty certain that officials will have already consulted with the royal college, but, if they have not, I give the noble Baroness an undertaking that they will.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the very good amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. If we are spending significant amounts of money on collecting this data and building a database and we have some of the best research facilities in the world, it seems to be sensible when looking at longitudinal studies to utilise that data properly.

My second and more prosaic point is that maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that subsection (5) and subsection (14) are at variance with each other. They are quite loosely drafted in new Section 16LB. Will the Minister comment on that, because the great thing about the noble Lord’s amendment is that it has pointed out that there seems to be a discrepancy between the two subsections?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I shall briefly speak in support of these amendments and of research. We do not need to have a national database established in order to do research because, first, research has to go through research ethics committees, so that is carefully scrutinised. You could take a representative sample of areas and use properly anonymised data. We can do that now. We can anonymise properly rather than using the old-fashioned pseudo-anonymisation, which was not helpful.

But in all these areas, I am afraid, we lack the evidence that we need to make sure that all our services are best targeted. When we are looking at very vulnerable children, we need to know which flags that are currently yellow flags should become red flags and which items do not show a correlation—although there has been an urban myth that they do correlate—so that the index of suspicion is appropriately targeted. To pick up on the point made by my noble friend earlier about having criteria, it is only through good research that we will get good criteria to determine the point at which we trigger an alert that a child is at risk and get that to happen earlier. It may well be that we are missing some important pointers just because they are not in people’s current consciousness, and there is a real danger in reacting to what I would call urban myths.

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[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I support these very useful proposals, which, as my noble friend has just outlined, would ensure that child contact centres are adequately funded and their staff and volunteers properly trained to guard against domestic abuse.

However, I would add a further recommendation, also made within the final report of the Ministry of Justice on research into safeguarding processes in child contact centres in England. This urges a greater exchange of learning and good practices, to improve consistency across contact centre procedures and policies. Child contact centres themselves can benefit from learning networks, across and beyond their region or local authority, by comparing notes on what is necessary and what works best, including not only the prescriptions of this proposed amendment but the advocacy of certain other proven expedients, whereby the spread of knowledge of their collective efficacy then serves to raise standards, both here and abroad.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for her generous words.

These centres are really important for children who have come from extremely disturbed backgrounds. One thing that they need to be able to do is to have contact with the parent with whom it is not safe for them to be in custody in another area. As they grow up, if they do not have that contact, they can end up feeling resentful towards the state, and that the state separated them from the parent, rather than understanding what happened. I will not go into the various cases and stories, but there are certainly quite a lot to illustrate that issue.

The reason this amendment is important is that we know that there is a lack of basic safeguarding training in some contact centres; in others, it is at an extremely high standard. There is variability of practice around picking up and escalating concerns, and challenges are faced by the courts in identifying safe and affordable contact arrangements. As has already been alluded to, the harm panel report of 2020 highlighted that child contact centres have a role.

I could speak for a long time about them, but I will not. I hope that the amendment speaks for itself, and that we might be able to have some conversations beyond Committee and before Report about whether there is some way that the Government would like to incorporate in the legislation the principles behind this amendment, accepting that they may not like the wording as it is on the page at the moment.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I would like the Government to incorporate the wording of this amendment into the legislation—it seems admirable. I am asked by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss to indicate her support for it as well. Accredited child contact centres are safe, neutral places providing for both supported contact and supervised contact arrangements—that is an important distinction. They allow children in separated families to see and enjoy contact with the non-resident parent and sometimes other family members.

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[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a valuable discussion, and I thank all noble Lords for their insightful and knowledgeable contributions. Child contact centres do indeed play an integral role in allowing parents to see their child in a safe environment for both parties involved. They allow parents not only to see their children, which is precious, but can act as a service to reconnect following significant time with no contact. Wherever safe and possible, parents should be able to see their children, and child contact centres allow this to happen.

Amendment 65 seeks to introduce regulations on child contact centres to ensure that they are accredited as regards safeguarding and prevention of domestic abuse. Child contact centres appear to be mostly under the umbrella organisation, the National Association of Child Contact Centres. This is a charitable organisation and, while these regulations appear sensible, we are concerned about the ongoing cost of implementation and structure. It would require inspections to take place, which would be a further financial burden, requiring additional staff to ensure compliance with these standards. We know that charities are already under pressure from increased national insurance contributions.

Of course, we respect the views of the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh, Lady Finlay and Lady Burt, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and we absolutely agree that these child centres should operate as a safe and enjoyable place for children to play, but we believe that this amendment has the potential to act as a regulatory burden on those very charities that are providing the service.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I slightly question the noble Lord’s assumption that inspection would be required at the level that he has outlined. Very often, you have a very caring parent who is extremely worried about the welfare of their child or children, who is then having contact with another parent about whom there has been a great deal of concern. If that very caring parent finds that the contact centre to which they have been referred has not had mandatory training—and I would expect them, in this day and age, to look up on the internet details about the contact centre on its website—they are likely to raise a complaint early, and waiting until there is a formal inspection may be too late. The problem is that, if we do not require training and set some standards, it becomes extremely difficult for a court determining what is to happen to a child to be able to go in-depth and know whether its recommendation and judgment are going to be in the best interests of the child.

So I respectfully slightly challenge the noble Lord over that and suggest that other people, such as grandparents and aunts and uncles, who are very concerned too about what will have been a tragic situation in their family, would be very likely to check out whichever contact centre it is and would want to know the standards that should be there—because they can see whether they are happening or not. A bit like the Care Quality Commission doing spot checks on hospitals, that is how they will get the data: not through a formal inspection. So identification of problems could emerge if this is written into the Bill.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her intervention and contribution. It was very interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Meston, say that a lot, if not all, of the contact centres are accredited. According to the NACCC website, there is DBS checking and there is provision in place. I take on board what the noble Baroness is saying, and that is why we are having this discussion—to get everyone’s views aired and come to an agreement.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is both necessary and important. It is a credit to the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Walmsley, who eloquently introduced it, and for years fought for the mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse to be firmly placed on the statute book.

Child abuse, whether in the form of physical, emotional or sexual mistreatment, whether through lack of care, or whether leading to injury or harm, is offensive and detestable. I welcome recognition by the movers of this amendment that the amendment should capture the importance of child sexual abuse in schools and sport clubs, as covered in proposed new Schedule 1A.

Within sport, each case of sexual abuse among children is one case too many. In sport, it is compounded because it takes place within a relationship of trust or responsibility; it is an abuse of the power and it is a breach of that trust. The influence that a sports coach or physical education teacher has over children is disproportionately compounded by the physical nature of proximity in sport and the near total control which can be exercised over an ambitious child seeking success in the world of sport. We have seen how prevalent this is in the worlds of gymnastics, football and athletics, to name just three sports which have witnessed the ugliness of child sexual abuse.

Taking each in turn, for decades this was a problem that was festering at the heart of gymnastics. For far too long, some coaches and teachers have been able to act with total impunity, forcing young children to experience extreme training programmes while bullying and humiliating dissenting voices into silence. Some coaches have abused their power and authority to commit terrible crimes against the children they should have been caring for, leaving lives destroyed in their wake. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, numerous prominent gymnasts spoke out about the bullying, discrimination and abuse that they experienced in the sport at schools and in clubs. As a result, the Whyte review was commissioned, and an independent report examined the allegations of mistreatment in the sport of gymnastics. Predatory coaches and teachers were allowed to move from school to school and gym to gym, undetected by a lax system of oversight, and predatory coaches and teachers worked to conceal abuse.

In football, a child abuse scandal involving the abuse of young players at football clubs began in November 2016, and by the end of 2021, 16 men had been charged with historical sexual abuse offences, 15 of whom were tried. One was head of PE at a school in Birmingham, another a secondary school teacher. In athletics, the documentary “Nowhere to Run” in the UK concerned the sexual abuse of athletes by a coach and how the athletes tried to deal with the impact of the abuse.

The current situation in law, as noble Lords in this Committee know, is that while child safeguarding requirements are mandatory for all schools and colleges in the UK, a duty is legally enshrined in the Education Act and various statutory instruments, which are welcomed. However, we need to go further. Those measures did not deter many of the cases that have come to light, and there is no law that compels everyone to report child sexual abuse. Despite the promises for action within the Crime and Policing Bill, there is no criminal sanction for failing to report child sexual abuse under the mandatory reporting plan. We need to go further than a duty to report that “may be referred” to a

“professional regulator (where applicable) or the Disclosure and Barring Service, who will consider their suitability to continue working in regulated activity with children”.

I join the noble Baronesses in their view that there should be professional criminal sanctions for failing to report or covering up child sexual abuse, which they have put in the amendment they have tabled.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has led work on a duty of care and safeguarding; I have been privileged to support on it for over 20 years. We have sought to create a sports ombudsman, or a sports duty of care quality commission, who would also have duties of care within all schools. We have sought to develop an independent benchmark survey to measure duty of care, to monitor whether duty of care policies are working, and to inform future policy and investment decisions, and we have sought to ensure that there is a duty of care guardian—one in every school, I hope—with responsibility for engaging with participants in school sport, as well as with young people across the talent pathways and in community sport.

Today we can go one step further. We can rectify the position of the absence of a well-designed, mandatory reporting law at the heart of the safeguarding shortcomings in institutional settings such as sport and recreation at schools. Let the lessons of the past protect the children of tomorrow, and let those of us who I hope one day will vote for this amendment, if it is not accepted by the Minister today, take the lead for future generations.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, this is an extremely important amendment. I have a slight concern that the Minister in replying may say that the Crime and Policing Bill is the place for such an amendment, but the problem with the proposals in that Bill is that they are based on age, whereas this amendment is much more subtle in responding to the emotional entrapment that goes on in grooming, the activity that goes on in grooming, and the difficulty of sexual abuse being perpetrated at all ages.

There are five areas that I think would have to go along with this—a public health awareness over the dangers of the early stages of emotional entrapment, leading to grooming that leads on to sexual abuse and the pressures that children are under. Therefore, there must be an awareness overall across society that none of this is acceptable, with training and support of all those who have any responsibility for children, and, when there is suspicion, clear pathways to people who can really deal with this sensitively.

One of the situations that comes to mind is the child who goes in to see their GP, perhaps a teenager seeking contraceptive advice. They may actually be in a sexual relationship where they have been coerced, pressured and emotionally groomed, and entrapped with the person who is abusing them, even if that is somebody who is also very young. There may be an imbalance in that relationship, particularly if it is a child who is desperate for love, affection and closeness altogether in their life.

When legislation is introduced, which it must be, it will also need good scientific evaluation—not just a tick-box review but a proper study to see how it is working. I was glad to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, say that this was a probing amendment, simply because there is a change I would like to see to it. The amendment refers to healthcare, including in GP surgeries, and I would like that to be extended to primary care services, given that a lot of primary care services occur out in the community. District and community nurses are going into people’s homes, which may well be places where they pick up that something is not right, particularly if there is one parent, or sometimes even two, who are ill and need input.

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Moved by

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

67: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Abolition of common law defence of reasonable punishment(1) The Children Act 2004 is amended as follows.(2) In section 58 (reasonable punishment: England), omit subsections (1) to (4).(3) After section 58, insert—“58A Abolition of common law defence of reasonable punishment(1) The common law defence of reasonable punishment is abolished in relation to corporal punishment of a child taking place in England.(2) Corporal punishment of a child taking place in England cannot be justified in any civil or criminal proceedings on the ground that it constituted reasonable punishment.(3) Corporal punishment of a child taking place in England cannot be justified in any civil or criminal proceedings on the ground that it constituted acceptable conduct for the purposes of any other rule of the common law.(4) For the purposes of subsections (1) to (3) “corporal punishment” means any battery carried out as a punishment. (5) The Secretary of State may make regulations for transitory, transitional or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of this section. (6) The power to make regulations under subsection (5) is exercisable by statutory instrument.(7) This section comes into force six months after the day on which the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2025 comes into force.58B Promotion of public awareness and reporting(1) The Secretary of State must take steps before the coming into force of section 58A to promote public awareness of the changes to the law to be made by that section.(2) The Secretary of State must, five years after its commencement, prepare a report on the effect of the changes to the law made by section 58A.(3) The Secretary of State must, as soon as practicable after preparing a report under this section—(a) lay the report before Parliament, and(b) publish the report.(4) The Secretary of State may make regulations for transitory, transitional or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of this section.(5) The power to make regulations under subsection (4) is exercisable by statutory instrument.””Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would abolish the common law defence of reasonable punishment in relation to corporal (physical) punishment of a child taking place in England, amend certain provisions of the Children Act 2004 relating to corporal punishment of children and place a duty on the Secretary of State to report this change.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, the long title of this Bill starts by stating that it is to:

“Make provision about the safeguarding and welfare of children”.


The Bill’s focus on well-being will be undermined if we allow intergenerational cycles of violence towards children to remain perpetuated. Amendment 67, along with the consequential Amendment 505, seeks to closes a loophole in the safeguarding provision for children; a loophole that was closed in Scotland in 2019 and in Wales in 2020 but not yet in England and in Northern Ireland.

Children need the same protection from assault as adults, yet lack protection because the law’s amendment 20 years ago left a loophole. When children are hit, the assaulting adult can claim that it is “reasonable chastisement”. There is no legal definition of what is reasonable; it depends on the circumstance. The line between lawful punishment and unlawful abuse is open to interpretation.

Paediatrician Professor Andrew Rowland, child protection officer at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, pointed out that he is

“regularly faced with difficult situations where it is alleged that physical punishment has been used against a child”.

Last year’s practice review in Worcestershire into nine year-old Alfie’s death flagged up the difficulty in distinguishing

“between what is lawful and proportionate and what is harmful and abusive”.

The preceding year, Norfolk’s review into the death of child AK concluded that the current law is confusing.

These risks are reiterated in safeguarding practice reviews, particularly as bruises are more difficult to see in skin of colour or when the child is extensively covered by clothing. The 2018 report from AFRUCA on safeguarding children in black and ethnic communities in London and Manchester found that complexity and ambiguity in England leaves many families unclear on the law, particularly those who have recently arrived in the UK.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the UK has signed up, commits states to protect children from all forms of physical violence, including corporal punishment within the family. The UN committee has explicitly stated that physical punishment is a violation of a child’s right to protection and should be banned. Around the world, 68 countries have now prohibited physical punishment and have shown a drastic reduction in the number of children being subject to severe corporal punishment.

There is clear evidence that physical punishment has no positive outcomes for children, as reported in the Lancet in 2021. The review of 69 studies found that physical punishment consistently predicts increases in child behaviour problems and mental health issues and in escalating physical abuse over time, increasing the need for child protection for more severe violence. The behaviour of control by hitting becomes externalised, with ever-worsening behaviour. These associations between physical punishment and detrimental outcomes are robust across child and parent characteristics: the more that children are hit, the worse the child behaviour over time.

Hitting children hurts on the outside and on the inside; it damages emotional development. Eight in 10 child runaways cite family violence as a cause. As one child said, “I was sick of my dad and his girlfriend hitting me”. Last year’s report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health shows that those who experience physical assaults in the name of punishment are two and a half times more likely to experience mental health problems and twice as likely to go on to experience significant injury and damage through more serious forms of physical abuse. Children subject to being hit in the name of discipline are more likely to bully others and to repeat the cycle of violence over and over again once they become adults.

The Children’s Commissioner for Wales, alongside the other three children’s commissioners, supports extending equal protection for all children in the UK. This amendment does not seek to prosecute parents. In Wales and Scotland, there has been no evidence of a significant increase in prosecutions following this change. It is about behaviour and culture change. If I hit a noble Lord, they would rightly accuse me of assault. However, England allows adults to hit a child, who will be much smaller than them, with a much more vulnerable body and emotional make-up. It is a way to vent their anger when they—the adult— cannot cope.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I hope I did make that clear earlier, but I am very happy to reiterate. It would be wholly wrong. It would not be in line with the law for the types of cases that we have heard about in this debate to be subject to the defence of reasonable punishment. The Crown Prosecution Service has been clear, as professionals are clear, that that would get nowhere near to this defence. I know that noble Lords will be disappointed, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, with the response of the Government, but I think it is a reasonable recognition of the very strong action taken when children are subject to violence and the need to learn from those who have recently changed the law. That is a sensible and appropriate way to go forward in this case.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all those who have who have spoken in support of this amendment. I am slightly disappointed that it leapt straight into the court end of things. I did not recognise being categorised, as was said, as an activist parent. I am not an activist parent, and those who have spoken are not activist parents.

One of the problems—and that is why I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett, Lady Whitaker and Lady Benjamin, who have been with me on this journey for such a long time—is that violence and assault against children happens insidiously. Children learn that this is the way to get control over other people, and it escalates. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, parents lose it. When they have lost it, it is often associated with alcohol, drugs or other stresses in the home. They do not deliberately set out to beat up the child; it just escalates, and it becomes more and more common.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for pointing out the change in the constitution in Germany towards children and to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, for his extensive experience with children. I think his experience may mirror mine. When I was doing paediatrics and admitting children, I was told, “Oh no, I just smacked them and they fell over”. When we investigated further, we found multiple fractures: old fractures, new fractures, all kinds of injuries that nobody had noticed before because they thought this had just been a gentle smack. I have yet to find a family who declare that they are wilfully not a loving family, but loads of families declare they are loving families and they clearly are not, and they have many problems.

The emphasis on positive parenting is certainly a theme from this Government. It has been a theme from the Government in Wales. It is terribly important. The last thing that I will say is that I have seen this at first hand with one family where the father certainly smacked his children remarkably often—and when he had had a drink, it was even more often. When he was told by the others in the family, “You can’t do that any more, you’ve got to stop”, his behaviour changed. Interestingly, the children’s behaviour improved dramatically. They went from being quite disturbed and disruptive to being quite well behaved, because of the positive parenting that went with being told why what they were doing was not good rather than just receiving a clout. That is what we are trying to do. The defence is used at the end of the road. For somebody seeing a child who is told “Oh, that was just reasonable punishment”, it is very difficult to unscramble it in the school or the GP surgery as you cannot do a bone scan. You have to take things at face value.

I shall just comment on the issue of skin colour. You do not see bruises nearly as easily in highly pigmented skin. That is just a fact. I advise noble Lords to look at a textbook of dermatology. All these things were written based on white skin, and they have finally woken up to the fact that in pigmented skin all kinds of things look different, and that includes injury and so-called “superficial injury”. So to say that you must not leave a mark does not hold water in a country where we have people from all over and a wonderful richness there.

So for the moment, I will withdraw the amendment, but I am very tempted to come back to it later, because I am not convinced by what I have heard today from the Government, and I feel much more convinced by my home country of Wales and my other home country of Scotland. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 67 withdrawn.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

I speak in support of both amendments but particularly Amendment 102 for the strong arguments which have been advanced.

At every stage of a family’s involvement with a local authority, efforts should be made to enable siblings to maintain contact with each other and not to overlook the importance of the sibling relationship. It is now much better understood that, when parents can no longer care for a child, the most important and significant relationship that child may have is with his or her siblings—a relationship which, as the noble Lord has just said, can last a lifetime.

Although local authorities and courts strive to keep siblings together, that is not always possible and they may have to be placed separately. They may have different and sometimes conflicting needs. At a practical level, larger sibling groups can be more difficult to place together. If, for whatever reason, they cannot be placed together, meaningful and workable contact arrangements are essential.

There is a report, which I think is correct, of two sisters who were placed separately five minutes apart but were not allowed to see each other. One sister had to see her sister at a distance in the same school playground playing with a foster-sister. It is a desperately sad story. I recall having to deal with a case in which the siblings were a short distance apart from each other but in different local authority areas, and considerable efforts were required to get the two local authorities to co-operate. It is for that reason that I support the amendment. Judicial encouragement is usually enough but not always, and therefore court orders may be appropriate.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has highlighted the problem of large sibling groups. I want to draw attention to a very specific group, which is bereaved children. Sometimes there are several children in a single-parent family and, when that one parent dies, often the children left behind are half-siblings—sometimes several of them. The amendment is incredibly important because those children are grieving for the parent who has died and then for the sibling or half-sibling that they are separated from.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, has reminded me of a family that I was involved with where the mum died and the father had been abusive so had no contact at all with the children, and the oldest child was a few months away from being 16. We managed, with the help of a schoolteacher and various other people, to keep those children together. Many years later, I still have some contact with them, and all the children have done well. I am convinced that, if we had not struggled to keep them housed together, then one of them in particular would probably have gone off the rails, yet they have all pursued good careers and have all done well.

As an investment for the long term in the lives of all these children, the amendment is important. I hope the Government will adopt it. I cannot see that it would cost anything in financial terms, but not adopting it probably would, because of the emotional trauma to the children who are separated from the people with whom they cannot share memories and remembrances about whomever it is they are separated from.

Another issue regarding that group of children is that sometimes there is a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle or someone who can provide them with some stability but is not in a position to provide kinship care. Keeping all those links going, and enabling them to link to cousins as well, can really support them.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 101 and 102 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, seek to promote familial relationships for looked-after children.

Amendment 101 seeks to include a duty to promote a child’s familial and social relationships alongside the existing duties for local authorities to promote the child’s welfare and educational achievement. This amendment emphasises the importance of maintaining relationships for children in care, which would have a positive contribution to their health and well-being. It is vital that the success of children in care is both child-led and child-centric and, as such, ensures that local authorities promote familial and social relationships.

Amendment 102 focuses on the relationships between looked-after children and their siblings. Currently, the relationship with parents is emphasised, and the relationship with siblings does not receive the same focus. As was highlighted by the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Meston, establishing a bond between siblings, which can be lifelong, should be a top priority for looked-after children so that, whatever challenges they may or hopefully may not be facing, they have someone to turn to whom they can trust and confide in.

These appear to be sensible amendments, and we look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to these important points.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 502YG. I declare my interest as the chief officer of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, the UK’s food allergy charity.

Regrettably, we have an education system completely unprepared for the growing numbers of food-allergic children in the UK, with safeguarding standards varying widely from school to school. Recent incidents underscore the urgent need for thorough staff training and well implemented allergen management policies. Food allergy-related deaths, which for the most part are preventable, while uncommon, tragically occur in school.

A few months ago, as the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, noted, the inquest into the death of Benedict Blythe, who was aged just five, concluded. Today, as we discuss this amendment, I know that Benedict is in our hearts and our minds, as is his mother, Helen. She is the driver behind Amendment 502YG, which would be a critical addition to the Bill.

There are of course excellent examples of food allergy management in some of our schools. However, with two children in every classroom having a food allergy, and one in five allergic reactions to food occurring in school, too many schools lack policies for effective allergy management and staff are inadequately trained. There is also a lack of understanding around allergy in our schools. That all impacts on children’s attendance and puts them at risk.

At the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, we regularly hear from parents about schools that ignore their requests for reasonable adjustments or, worse still, are dismissive about a child’s allergy. These persistent challenges are faced by thousands of allergy families across the country, and they reinforce that allergies should be treated with the same seriousness and attention as other medical conditions in school settings. That is why, at the Natasha foundation, we launched Allergy School, which offers free practical resources to help teachers create inclusive and safe environments for children with food allergies.

However, charities and foundations cannot deliver change alone. The Government need to do more to help schools and early years settings be better equipped to manage food allergies, from improved staff training to safer food management practices. This amendment would achieve that. It would ensure that all schools had proper staff training; effective policies in place; data—I emphasise that for the sake of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell—on allergic reactions, which is woefully lacking; and spare AAIs, or adrenaline auto-injectors.

There are very few chronic conditions that can take a child from perfectly fine to unconscious in 30 minutes, but food allergy anaphylaxis is one of them. Who can disagree with life-saving medication being on site and quickly and easily accessible to save a child’s life? I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, the hour is late. I have my name on some of these amendments. I simply say that the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has highlighted that around 16% of children aged five to 16 now have a mental health disorder. CAMHS cannot cope with this. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, is certainly trying to plug that large hole.

I also remind the Committee that it has been estimated that in every class, on average, there is a child who has been bereaved of a parent or sibling. That is not trivial trauma; it is major. They need support and help, but they are often not getting it.

On collecting data, it is essential that we know what we are doing. However, we must use validated measures that have been properly evaluated, so that schools are measuring what people think they are measuring and they do not contain leading questions and so on. In addition, good-quality data allows a school to understand whether it is improving.

I declare my interest as having chaired the Science and Technology Committee’s sixth report on allergy, and I strongly underline all the comments made in it. During that inquiry, we heard about children being bullied by other children who put peanuts in their pockets, and about staff sometimes confusing anaphylaxis with panic attacks because they have not had training. It is a very simple measure to train staff and to make sure that they can access an EpiPen. With that, I hope that the Government will adopt the suggestions in these amendments.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the amendments she has put forward. I hope that the Government are thoroughly behind the National Education Nature Park, which is a great initiative from the Department for Education, and are looking for ways to push that out, maybe through the natural history GCSE. If the noble Baroness feels in need of a holiday, I recommend Japan as a place that has really got on top of how to get young citizens involved with nature; that may surprise noble Lords, in view of the urban character of Japan, but it is very good at that.

I also agree with my noble friend Lady Spielman that indirect measures are best. They are very much the underpinning of the Good Schools Guide: watching, observing and looking for strong structures and relationships—and, yes, someone to turn to when you do not know what to do, but an excess of mental health professionals is almost always the sign of a school in trouble.

When it comes to children, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies. By asking a child a question, you create the answer; you have to be really careful how you try to measure well-being, particularly in young children. Maybe the Dutch can teach us to do it, but I share the scepticism of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about much of what is going on in schools at the moment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have a probing amendment in this group, which came about because it struck me that we need to be prepared to think of the unthinkable. Sadly, there have been some tragedies in different schools in different places. There have been bus crashes and knifings. We know that defibrillators on sports fields have saved lives by having a programme that was rolled out. We know that autoinjectors of adrenaline, which are now in schools as a spare autoinjector, have been saving lives.

However, I am not sure that children really know how to cope with some of the life-threatening emergencies that can occur before emergency services arrive: particularly, how to manage if a child seems to be bleeding out from a severe injury—there are some very simple measures that can be taken—how to manage choking if someone is choking on a bolus of food in the dining room, and how to manage a chemical attack. I should say that my own grandsons attended the school—one is still at the school—where there was a chemical attack on a pupil in the street that hit the news. I was very struck many years ago when those same grandchildren were much younger and at nursery, where they were taught a very simple rhyme to shout if there was a fire: “Fire, fire. Do not hide. Run outside”. It was terribly simple. We chanted it in the home with them. It was an important lesson, because things can be incredibly dangerous and can happen very fast.

The purpose of my amendment is to probe the extent to which we are taking seriously some of the unthinkable things that could happen to our schoolchildren and making sure that they are prepared for responding in a way that does not further endanger them when there is serious danger in front of them. It is a probing amendment—I know that it is not well drafted—but I felt that when we are going through such enormously complicated legislation, putting so much onus on schools, we have to think about the unthinkable.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lord, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and to share in her concern about the need to prepare pupils in this age of shocks where we literally do not know what is around the corner. I have often spoken in your Lordships’ House about the need for first aid education in schools. This amendment is broader than that.

We need education that prepares people for life and not just for exams. I note that recently some basic questions about first aid have been introduced into the driving licence test, which shows that there is some recognition by the Government of the need to act in this space.

I shall speak chiefly to my Amendments 502YB and 502YK and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support for them. Amendment 502YB, which would require a review of climate adaptation in schools, very much fits with the noble Baroness’s Amendment 502P, but her amendment is focused largely on the physical fabric of schools while mine is focused to a large degree on how schools behave and are arranged. It is more of a behavioural kind of question.

I note that the UK Health Security Agency has published updated guidance about heat for schools and early years settings. That guidance allows schools to relax uniform policy in the heat. It suggests that students should wear loose, light-coloured clothing and sun hats with wide brims, stay in the shade as much as possible, and wear sunscreen with high sun protection factors, et cetera. It also says that teachers should encourage students to take off their blazers and jumpers. But all that is in terms of encouragement and suggestions.

I put it to the Minister and the Government more broadly that we are in a situation now, particularly when we have so many schools with an unreasoning and almost religious attachment to rigid uniform policies, where there should be rules that say that schools must act to keep pupils safe. I note that the National Education Union suggests that 26 degrees should be set as an appropriate point at which to identify additional measures—so let us make some rules about taking action to protect our children.

On the broader point about climate resilience, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred to a London study; I shall refer to a London programme that may have followed from that, Climate Resilient Schools. In 2022-23, the Mayor of London funded measures in 100 schools to make them more resilient, but when we look at the website, we can see that that programme has now ended. Surely, we need an ongoing programme to make our schools more climate resilient.

I come now to Amendment 502YK, about the prevention of the transmission of respiratory and other diseases in classrooms and schools generally. I was looking at Amendment 502YH in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which would introduce a new clause headed:

“Statutory standards of filtering and monitoring systems deployed in schools”.


I thought, “Oh, this might be similar”, but, no, that is an amendment about computer or digital viruses. We have just had a very long debate focusing on those digital safety issues, but, somehow, even despite the Covid pandemic, we have rather less focus on biological virus risks—mine is the only amendment that does that.

You might call this the Covid amendment, and certainly I speak in the context where it is very clear that Covid is not over; a new variant, Stratus, is spreading fast and raising levels of concern. That means that Covid is still spreading and that more and more people are not just becoming ill in the short term but, as we know, getting long Covid. The pulmonologist, Binita Kane, has recently started an NHS long Covid clinic and notes that there has been a refusal to acknowledge the problem of long Covid, and the continuing problem. If we look at the history of the world’s medical treatment of so-called chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalomyelitis, we see that there has been a refusal to acknowledge the issue of broader post-viral syndromes and the fact that people get ill for a long time.

There was a study out at the end of last year whose headline said that after two years 70% of the children who had shown the symptoms of long Covid were no longer displaying them. That means, of course, that 30% of the children who had been diagnosed a couple of years ago with long Covid still have it, and it is still affecting their lives. That is something that we cannot ignore about Covid—but, of course, this is not just a Covid amendment. Just because we have had a Covid pandemic, that will not have any impact on the continuing acute risks of a flu pandemic, something that the world has known much of in the past.

Ventilation and air filtration are also good for pupil concentration. It is good for general health to have fresh air in the classroom, and we need to be able to look after the health of pupils. I have a direct question for the Minister—I shall understand if she wants to write to me on it later. In 2021, England spent £25 million on providing all state-funded schools and colleges with a portable CO₂ monitor for every two classrooms. There was further funding in November 2022 for the remaining 50% of classrooms. The recommendation is that CO₂ levels should be kept below 800 parts per million, with indoor air at 600 to 800 parts per million being a relatively good level of ventilation. Can the Minister tell me now or in the future how many of those monitors are still in use and what kind of results they are showing?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 14th January 2026 Lords Chamber

But it is important, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that the contact centre needs to know a bit about the background, needs to have appropriate training for its members who are looking after the children—you do not need a great deal of training, but you do need some—and, in particular, that the contact centre is meeting the absolute minimum standards, because there are centres out there that would not be entirely suitable for families and children. Consequently, I very strongly support this amendment.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have my name on this amendment and I am grateful to the Minister from the Ministry of Justice, who met a group of us to look at how the findings and recommendations from the Cordis Bright report could be met. I would like to add a tiny word to the way in which this amendment was so well introduced.

The report’s findings showed that contact centres provide an important service, as we have already heard, and enable thousands of parents to have contact with children safely. But it pointed out that there is scope to improve emotional safeguarding and the provision of domestic abuse training for contact centre staff, and the importance of a system-wide approach to safeguarding adults or children from the risk of domestic abuse and other harm. The report presented a series of evidence-led recommendations to support this.

The point of the amendment is to ensure that there are appropriate standards. This is about raising standards everywhere, because it keeps the child at the centre of what is happening and being recommended.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly join the support for this amendment. If somebody is doing something that is potentially difficult, training will be essential, so that they understand what their role is, do not make basic mistakes, et cetera. I would have thought that this is something that should be there, but those who tabled the amendment think it is not. The Government should think about what the response should be, because, if people with this degree of knowledge think there is a need for better training, there probably is.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. It would require all providers of child contact centre services to be accredited by the National Association of Child Contact Centres to national standards set by the Secretary of State. In responding to this, I start by recognising, as all noble Lords have, the vital role played by the National Association of Child Contact Centres and the many dedicated child contact centres across England and Wales. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made clear, their work is fundamental to the family justice system, providing supervised or supported contact in a safe, neutral environment, allowing children to maintain a meaningful relationship with a non-resident parent. The commitment of staff and volunteers to safeguarding and creating a child-focused space is invaluable. I express my sincere appreciation for the work that they and the NACCC undertake.

I understand the motivation behind this amendment, but the Government do not believe that it is necessary and are already responding to some of the points made in this debate and in the debate in Committee. The NACCC already accredits the majority of centres in England and Wales, with research showing that unaccredited centres are uncommon. In preparing for this, I asked the obvious question: how many unaccredited child contact centres are there? Interestingly, the Cordis Bright research that the noble Baroness referred to found that there was only a small number of unaccredited contact centres, but the report did not provide a figure or estimate for the number of unaccredited contact centres. When those working in accredited child contact centres who took part in the research were asked about unaccredited contact centres, they indicated that such centres were few in number. This may well suggest that we have made progress, due to the efforts of the NACCC, in ensuring that many more child contact centres are accredited by it.

Following the meeting that noble Lords had with my noble friend Lady Levitt, which has been mentioned by several noble Lords, a range of work has been commissioned and is being taken forward by officials at the Ministry of Justice. One of those pieces of work is for officials to work with the NACCC to further understand how we can identify the number of unaccredited contact centres in England and Wales.

Also following from that meeting, other streams of work are taking place that will, I hope, provide reassurance to noble Lords on some of the specific issues that they have raised. These include, first, exploring the possibility of introducing a protocol or similar mechanism for mediators to ensure that they refer families only to accredited centres. Secondly, several noble Lords raised an important point about ensuring that those in child contact centres are suitably trained. Another piece of work is carrying out a further review of the mandatory training already in place for child contact centre staff and volunteers in order to ensure that it is as good as it can be. As I have already said, we are developing a more robust understanding of where any unaccredited centres are and of any concerns that may exist in relation to them.

While I completely understand that the amendment is well intentioned, I do not believe that mandatory accreditation is the best way to approach the issues that have been raised. The NACCC already provides effective leadership and oversight to the majority of centres. Further to this, the work the Ministry of Justice is now taking forward will provide additional reassurance in this space. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment, given the good work that is already being undertaken in relation to the points that noble Lords have raised.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Before the Minister sits down, what action can be taken against a centre that appears to be quite dubious and unaccredited? While the amendment is not being accepted, there is recognition that there may be activities going on which are effectively underground. The children who may be having contact with a family member—usually a parent—in such a situation might be exposed to quite serious risk.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I do not believe that there is evidence to suggest that that is the case. All the research suggests that there is a very small number of unaccredited centres. My noble friend Lord Ponsonby made an important point about how it is possible to identify centres that are accredited. The vast majority of them are. Given that it is clear that the NACCC accreditation scheme covers the vast majority, I would have thought that that is the appropriate route. As I have said, we are going to ensure that there is a protocol for mediators that means they use only accredited routes. I would have thought that that would also have been the case for courts.

An unaccredited child contact centre might be used in limited circumstances for specific, short-term purposes because of the individual circumstances of the case—for example, in order to limit the travel that a child had to do in particular circumstances. Local authorities are under a legal duty to ensure that such provision meets all statutory safeguarding requirements and promotes the child’s welfare, so there is another level of assurance in the system. I will refer to my noble friend Lady Levitt the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Ponsonby about the ability of courts to always be able to determine the nature of the contact centres where they are referring children. He raised a reasonable point, and I am sure all of us would want to ensure that it is covered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. Her flight was delayed by 24 hours, so I am afraid noble Lords have got me instead. In moving Amendment 28 I will speak also to Amendment 97.

For far too long, child neglect has been absent from the conversation about supporting families and reducing the number of children in care. The consequences of neglect are devastating. It can impact on a child’s physical and mental health, hinder their development and disrupt their ability to form secure relationships. With a shift towards a greater focus on multi-agency family support across local authorities through the Families First initiative, now is the opportune time to take a strategic approach to tackling child neglect. NSPCC data over the past five years has consistently shown neglect to be the number one reason for people contacting its helpline.

Professionals continue to speak of a lack of national focus on tackling neglect, which has left many children without the right support. Resources and early help services —which have been at an all-time low while economic pressures have been at an all-time high—are receiving a welcome boost through measures in the Bill. But the new focus on support must go hand in hand with a greater focus on tackling neglect.

Persistently high levels of neglect, and those circumstances remaining unnoticed or unaddressed, reflect reduced early health services for families and uncertainty among the public about when services need to be involved in a child’s life. They are also impacted by rising child poverty levels. As they take steps to address embedded issues in children’s social care and implement their new child poverty strategy, the Government have a rare opportunity to ensure that neglect is a fundamental part of the discussion.

It is also important to note that many parents living in poverty make astonishing sacrifices to ensure that their children are not adversely impacted by material hardship. We must be clear that not all children living in poverty experience neglect, and neither does neglect happen only in families experiencing poverty; it is present in affluent households, too. However, emerging evidence does draw out links between poverty and all forms of harm.

Such a national strategy would make a real and tangible difference to the lives of children. Neglect often overlaps substantially with other forms of child maltreatment and can be present in other forms of abuse that are taking place. The Government must therefore wake up to the profoundly urgent crisis of child neglect and commit to a national child neglect strategy that gives children and families in England vital support before irreversible harm is done.

That is why early help is so crucial. Children need early, effective and holistic support to address these vulnerabilities, recover from harm and achieve positive outcomes. I was pleased to hear the Minister recognise in Committee that neglect is an enormously difficult and important area of work for children’s social care, and probably one where professionals and others need even more support to be able to identify it and take mitigating action.

The Government clearly agree that equipping professionals to identify concerns about neglect early, enabling parents to reach out for support in a non-stigmatising way, and ensuring that there are available resources to respond effectively to neglect, are vital to reducing the devastating impact that neglect can have on children.

While we are optimistic that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will address some of these urgent concerns through measures such as the new multi-agency child protection teams, stronger information-sharing duties and consistent child identifiers, the reality is that, without the local services and expertise in place, neglect will continue to lack the national and local attention it so urgently needs. That is why a national child neglect strategy is essential.

Finally, the Minister noted in her response to the earlier version of this amendment in Committee:

“Protection from all forms of abuse, including neglect, is a key priority for the Government”.—[Official Report, 9/6/25; col. 1122.]


Neglect is often the earliest sign of child maltreatment. If the Government are serious about prioritising protection against all forms of harm and supporting families as early as possible, preventing and tackling neglect through a dedicated strategy must be a central plank of their response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I return to the issue of the defence of reasonable punishment. My Amendment 97 asks the Government to look carefully at the report from Wales, following three years of implementation of their legislation. In response to my amendment in Committee, the Government repeated the statement that they were waiting for evidence from Wales. My amendment seeks only to make sure that this happens; it does not force the Government to take a decision but asks them to inform Parliament of their assessment of the Welsh findings and the implications for England.

I am grateful to the Minister for having met me after the Committee stage of the Bill. The evidence has increased that physical punishment harms children’s health and well-being and does not improve behaviour. That includes nearly 70 studies reviewed in the Lancet and evidence from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. No positive outcomes have been shown and there is a higher risk of later physical abuse, with clear links to behavioural problems and mental health difficulties.

This amendment is supported by 24 leading organisations in child health and child protection, social care and human rights. While we delay, children continue to be inappropriately physically punished. Contacts to the NSPCC adult and child helplines have shown an increase, not decrease, in concerns over physical punishment in recent years. Polling has shown that those with professional safeguarding responsibilities overwhelmingly support the approach taken in Wales and Scotland. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child committee has repeatedly recommended that the UK repeal the defence of reasonable punishment when a child has had physical abuse.

The Wales report shows that the legislative changes are progressing well. The Minister for Children and Social Care, Dawn Bowden MS, described the review as evidence that the law is working and making significant progress in protecting children’s rights. The report concludes that Wales has made a clear rights-based shift away from physical punishment. There is strong interagency collaboration and a focus on prevention and education. Most referrals come from professionals, indicating that the system in Wales operates through normal safeguarding channels. Therefore, many professionals reported no increase in workload as the law aligns with their duties, finding that the law has clarified and strengthened their ability to protect children and have better conversations with parents. It has helped educate and support parents in managing behaviours differently.

There is no evidence that such legislation interferes with children in loving, supportive families, nor that any trusted stakeholders are disproportionately affected by removing the defence of reasonable punishment when they make decisions. Wales’s highly successful out- of-court parenting support scheme has had 365 individuals referred by the police between 2022 and 2024; 265 reported positive outcomes in increased parental confidence for children’s behaviour. Fewer than five cases were considered by the Crown Prosecution Service, and there have been zero convictions.

Some 95% of parents and 91% of the public know that physical chastisement is illegal in Wales. Such changes provide children with equal protection from assault. Aggressive physical chastisement leads the child to becoming more aggressive themselves over time and developing poorer quality parent-child relationships in later life, as well as showing emotional and behavioural difficulties in school and a variety of negative health and development consequences. Importantly, there is no evidence that physical punishment relates to any positive developmental outcome.

As we see in this group of amendments, the Government are investing in schemes to protect children at risk of abuse and to prevent them falling through the cracks in services. All these investments must be evaluated. The evidence from three years’ evaluation in Wales should not be ignored. We do not accept hitting adults—that is assault. Yet at the moment, hitting children in England in the name of discipline is viewed as acceptable, even though the relative force between the hand that hits and the small body of a child involves a greater risk of causing physical as well as emotional damage.

The three-year report is now before us. The amendment simply asks the Government to fulfil their promise to review the implications of these findings for children in England in order to provide equal protection from assault.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

I doubt whether even the most ardent proponent of the Bill could attempt credibly to justify such a sweeping assertion. It is, however, beyond doubt that these amendments, if adopted, would indeed improve the well-being of many hundreds of thousands of children.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, it was 19 years ago that I had the privilege of chairing the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into allergy for this House. I remind the House that, even then, we were saying that half of those who died from an allergic reaction had not had any previous serious reaction, and we highlighted the need for adrenaline auto-injectors and the fact that they were not being used effectively. The failure of pens was for several reasons, usually that the injection was not given intramuscularly, there was poor training or pens had passed their expiry date, were being used too late in a reaction or were not available at the time of the reaction. The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, and of my noble friend Lord Fryberg are incredibly important and are 19 years overdue. We really cannot carry on like this.

There is guidance on the use of adrenaline auto-injectors in schools from the Department of Health in 2017, but it states:

“This guidance is non-statutory”.


It goes on to say:

“The Children and Families Act 2014 requires governing bodies of English schools to make arrangements for supporting pupils with medical conditions”.


The problem is, of course, that the management of allergies is not statutory, and children present with a very wide range of medical conditions, but there are not that many that present the medical emergency that an allergic reaction can present.

The summary states that schools are not required to hold adrenaline auto-injectors. If they do not have one when a child is collapsing, even if the child has their own with them, the risk of that child’s death goes up significantly. The guidance is also very clear that the MHRA expert group from 2020 said that adrenaline should be administered at the first sign of a reaction, and that the risk of delay outweighs harm. I suggest that the cost of delay is absolutely massive and must be properly considered in terms of the cost of providing these pieces of equipment that can be stored, and incorporating training, as we have already heard.

The guidance is very clear: if in doubt, give adrenaline and, if there is no improvement after five minutes, give another dose. Children’s schools must have the ability to recognise allergy wherever that child is and react rapidly, because five minutes is not very long. You cannot run from one side of a school to another to try to find somebody who knows what to do because, by then, tragically, the child may have had a cardiac arrest.

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 209, 210 and 212 and declare my interest as the chief operating officer of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, the UK’s food allergy charity.

While some schools manage food allergies well, too many do not and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, expertly put it, with around two children in every classroom living with a food allergy, and one in five food-related allergic reactions occurring at school, the absence of clear policies and consistent staff training continues to place children at risk. These failings also affect attendance and undermine inclusion.

Amendment 209 seeks to address these long-standing gaps. If it is accepted by the Government, that would represent a fitting tribute to five year-old Benedict Blythe, who tragically died from anaphylaxis at school, and to his mother Helen, whose tireless advocacy has brought us to this moment.

Earlier this week, as others have said, Helen Blythe and representatives of national allergy charities met with the Minister for early years to discuss the urgent need for a robust statutory approach to allergy management in schools. The response and commitment from the Minister were extremely welcome and I hope that, tonight, those commitments from my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern will be confirmed from the Dispatch Box. At the outset, I shall list quite a few points where confirmation and clarification are needed, so, if my noble friend is unable to cover all these points today, will she commit to write to me and place a copy in the Library for all noble Lords to see?

For the benefit of campaigners, allergy charities, clinicians and parents and carers of food-allergic children following this debate, I would be grateful if my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern could confirm the Government’s position on a number of points. First, will my noble friend confirm that it is the Government’s intention to address the long-standing and well-evidenced gaps in the management of allergies in educational settings, and that this will be taken forward through statutory guidance?

Secondly, will my noble friend confirm that such statutory guidance will require schools to have a whole-school allergy policy, and ensure that all staff on site receive training in allergy awareness, risk reduction and the recognition and emergency management of anaphylaxis, and that school will be required to hold accessible, in-date, spare adrenaline auto-injectors on site for emergency use?

Will my noble friend also confirm that the Government intend to ensure leadership and accountability for implementation of such a policy, including the expectation that school governors will take a leadership role and that Ofsted will be asked to take allergen management into account in its inspection framework?

On emergency response, will my noble friend confirm that, alongside a requirement to hold spare, in-date auto-injectors, the existing 2007 guidance on the use of AIs in schools will be revised to make it explicit that, where an adult suspects anaphylaxis, they should call 999 immediately and administer the AI without delay, whether with a prescribed or a spare device, and that administration of the second AI will not cause any harm and may be life-saving?

Will my noble friend also confirm whether the Government intend to bring forward an SI to enable schools to take advantage of the new adrenaline delivery devices, including nasal sprays, as they become available?

With regard to policies and training, I support Amendments 210 and 212 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. Will my noble friend confirm that training and policies are intended to apply to all staff on site, including external providers operating on school premises, and in particular school caterers? Food provision remains a significant risk area for pupils with food allergies. Effective management requires clear systems, and it should be a shared school responsibility.

Lastly, the Bill makes provision for a unique number for every child in England to support the sharing of information for safeguarding purposes. Is allergy data being considered as part of the pilot project in Wigan testing the use of the NHS number as a unique identifier in children’s care? If not, will my noble friend consider allergy health information within that work? Will she facilitate a meeting for me and relevant representatives of charities, including school caterers, to explore this issue further with colleagues in the relevant departments?