Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Mohammed, and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar, on their maiden speeches. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, is absolutely right about the child well-being problem, which is why I focus my interventions on the well-being aspects of the Bill, including children’s rights and voices and physical, mental and emotional well-being—specifically, their nutrition and protection against physical or sexual violence.

Research shows strong links between poor well-being and child poverty. Children from low-income homes often go hungry or have a very poor diet. That is why the Government must use all their levers to ensure that children are properly nourished. The Healthy Start scheme has helped young families buy fruit, veg and milk for their children. However, uptake is low as many eligible families have never heard of it, let alone applied for it. The value of the vouchers has not kept up with food inflation, and this must change. Will the Government welcome an amendment from me to auto-enrol eligible families to ensure that children get their entitlement?

The second lever is the food served in schools. I welcome the new school breakfast clubs, but they must serve healthy food. It is important to distinguish between a breakfast that fills the tummy and one that nourishes. The school food standards have not been reviewed for 10 years, and they hardly mention breakfasts. Does the Minister believe that current school food standards are strong enough to guarantee that children will be getting nourishing food in breakfast clubs? Will she welcome an amendment to update the school food standards, as recommended by the report Recipe for Health of the Lords committee, which I had the honour to chair, including clear rules on what a nutritious school breakfast must look like?

Breakfasts are not the only problem. There are still children who meet the narrow entitlement for free school meals but do not get their free meal, so we also need auto-enrolment here. The quality of school lunches is often poor and may not comply with school food standards, and neither is there any proper monitoring of and compliance with the existing standards. What are the Government planning to do about that? Perhaps we can do something during the passage of the Bill.

On violence against children, children still do not have equal protection against assault as we, as adults, have. It is time that the “reasonable chastisement or punishment” defence, which can be used in court, is removed, as in Scotland and Wales. I am delighted to see a great deal of support for this change here and in the new intake of MPs in another place. Some 90% of social workers, 77% of healthcare professionals, 75% of teachers and 51% of police also support the change. Social workers say that the current legal position makes their safeguarding work more difficult, and it is unclear for parents. The current law is discriminatory because it says you can hit a child as long as it does not leave a mark on the skin. What about dark skin or one that does not bruise easily? Will the Government bring equality and clarity to the law by accepting amendments to remove the defence referred to only recently by the perpetrator in the tragic case of Sara Sharif?

Sexual violence has lifelong effects: people live with unwarranted guilt and difficulty in making healthy relationships. The IICSA has recommended that knowledge of or reasonable suspicion that a child has been sexually abused must always be reported to the relevant authority. The Government claim they intend to enshrine this in law. I look forward to reassurance from the Minister, but I am not sure that a duty of candour will be enough. If I am not reassured, the Minister will be hearing more from me and others as the Bill progresses.