Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Lizzi Collinge]

Q Anne, you said that family group decision making can be fantastic if done well. What are your thoughts about how prescriptive the statutory guidance should be on the format of those family group decision meetings?

Anne Longfield: It has to be. If this is to be the cornerstone of our ability to move towards a kinship model, intervene earlier and get alongside families, it has to work properly. All the evidence is based on a full family group conferencing system. Of course, you would want to take any opportunity to work around families, but this is about planning, being there at the right time and having the involvement of children and families. That is not something that local authorities themselves can decide on.

It is also about the commitment to do something with it. Without that, it could just be a meeting with families, which would be an absolute missed opportunity. I am not a specialist in this; I went along and found family group conferencing about 12 or 15 years ago. I used to call them magic meetings. Out of nowhere came solutions that changed people’s lives. I do not want to become too enthused, but it has to be done right, and the principles need to be seen through.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Q You have enthused about family group decision making. Do you think it would be useful at other stages in the process, particularly in approaching families for unification at the point of discharge for care leavers?

Dr Homden: Yes, we would support that. We would also call for specific coverage in the statutory guidance on how children with family members abroad can benefit, and for consideration in that guidance on contact, particularly with siblings.

Anne Longfield: I would also look at the mechanism at other points, such as when children are at risk of becoming involved in crime and the like. But for now, yes.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

Q I would like to ask about the requirement for local authorities to offer Staying Close. We have seen some success with that in Southampton, but from the direct work of both your organisations, do you think that the Staying Close offer meets the most pressing needs of care leavers, or are there other things that the Bill should consider?

Anne Longfield: Carol will probably talk about the detail more than I will, but in principle it was a really important change to be made and a really important commitment. Young people I have met have appreciated it and seen the value of it. I do not think it is yet at the point where most care leavers would say that it is meeting all their ambitions, nor of course is it anywhere. Having it as part of the Bill, to extend and strengthen it, is important, but it is there to be built on. We know from the outcomes for young people leaving care that it is crucial that that level of stability and support is in place.

Dr Homden: We support the extension of support to care leavers in the Bill. Provisions need to ensure greater consistency across the country in the support that is offered. It is important that the introduction of Staying Close provisions in this case will be offered to care leavers only where the authority assesses that such support is required. It is also important that that does not dilute the role and responsibilities of personal advisers. Young people speak very passionately in our Bright Spots surveys about the importance of the emotional and practical support that they provide. We must take care that that is not undermined.

Staying Close must mean what is close for the individual. This also extends to the legal duties to publish a local offer, which already exist, but really the question is whether we can achieve greater consistency and transparency for young people. For example, our young people in A National Voice, the national council for children in care, have been campaigning on the fact that almost two years after the Department for Education announced the increase for their setting up home grants, 10% of local authorities are still not applying it. All too often, these young people therefore experience a form of postcode lottery. Finally, our research has shown huge disparity in relation to the appreciation of levels of disability and long-term health conditions among care leavers. This needs to be a key area of focus.

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[Lizzi Collinge]

Q I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I am a corporate parent in Lancashire. I am interested in the powers on financial oversight and profit caps on residential children’s homes in particular. What impact do you foresee that having on the resources you have available to look after children?

Ruth Stanier: We very much expect that these measures should, over time, lead to a reduction of some of the extremely high costs that have been set out in recent research we have done. That should free up some additional funding for all the other things councils need to be doing.

Andy Smith: If you look at the breadth of measures in the Bill around having the right placements for the right type of child in the right part of the country, and having regulations to try to move away from unregulated placements—we have seen the proliferation of those in recent years—over time we should start to see a more consistent provision of accommodation and placements across the country. There is a focus on fostering, kinship care and prevention as the continuum that we need for children, and there is a real focus on trying to keep children out of care in the first place.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q Clause 8 specifies that local authorities need to set out a local offer. You have talked about the need to avoid fragmentation, and about corporate responsibility across the country and across Departments. Would you like to see the Bill amended to require a national offer of support to care leavers, and what do you think should be in it?

Ruth Stanier: We certainly would want to see corporate parenting duties extended at a national level to Government Departments and relevant public sector bodies. We think that is incredibly important. Otherwise, we are very much supportive of the measures in the Bill in respect of the kinship offer, though we think it is important that there is a clear threshold for that support so that it is realistic and affordable and can be implemented.

Andy Smith: I would support that. A national offer for care leavers is an interesting concept. There should be some absolute minimum requirements we expect in an offer, and I think you would broadly see that in many councils in what is provided for children in care and for care leavers. It is usually co-produced with representatives who were care leavers, and with councils and so on. I think that would be an important reflection within the context of a much broader understanding of corporate parenting.

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Q We heard in earlier evidence that spending on early intervention has reduced while crisis costs have significantly increased. What do you think will be the impact of early intervention, including family group decision making, primarily on outcomes but also, in the longer term, on costs?

Ruth Stanier: We very much think that the measures in the Bill will help to pull funding to the left, further upstream into prevention. We warmly welcome the Government’s recent investment in the children’s prevention grant. We think that the measures should help to improve outcomes and reduce costs over the longer term.

Andy Smith: It is absolutely a false economy not to invest in early help and early intervention. We know that the evidence base is so strong on children escalating into higher-cost services. My authority has invested in early help services, and we have an edge of care team that targets children on the edge of the care system. When we are able to prevent them from going into care, we track the cost avoidance, looking at what a typical placement might have cost. We have saved in excess of £5 million over the last three years in cost avoidance.

The case is well argued. The challenge is that councils are at different starting points because of the way in which funding has been eroded over the last 10 years and the fact that many councils have to prioritise the higher-cost services, which often take away from early intervention. It is a false economy. If we can get the funding right, the Bill offers us an opportunity to invest in family help and early help services and start to see impacts much more consistently. We are beginning to see some of that from the 12 Families First pilots that are taking place.

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[Darren Paffey]

Q Are those expectations clear enough?

Julie McCulloch: I think they could probably be clearer.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q The Bill talks about breakfast clubs, but says nothing about free school meals more widely. Would you like to see an expansion of eligibility for free school meals?

Julie McCulloch: We would.

[Ellie Chowns]

Could you elaborate on that?

Julie McCulloch: Happily. We would like to see the expansion up to 18—at the moment, it goes up to only 16 —and we would like to see it expanded to all children in families receiving universal credit.

Paul Whiteman: We are in a similar position. We absolutely accept the evidence that well-fed students perform and work better. Our only concern is the level of funding that comes with it. The provision has to be funded properly, not just for buying the food but, importantly, for the capital costs to make sure that those things can be delivered properly.

[David Baines]

Q I am sure that we would all agree that we want to see high standards in every school for every child, whether that is for academic attainment and achievement or for safeguarding outcomes. In your view—broadly speaking; we have limited time—does the Bill help or hinder the ambition of high and rising standards in every school for every child?

Paul Whiteman: I certainly do not think it hinders that. On the extent to which the Bill addresses some of the struggles that we have had about attendance and support for children, it will certainly help. Often, when we are discussing such things, the language is very unhelpful, because most schools have high and rising standards already—it is a very small percentage of schools that are in real difficulty. My eye is therefore drawn to the provisions for when intervention occurs, how that support occurs and whether that will help, and I absolutely think it will. Having alternatives, not just one answer, will assist the local education economy and the local education effort to collaborate more and to help more. One of the things that we need to make sure that we are doing much better in a fragmented system is encouraging more collaboration between different trusts and schools.

Julie McCulloch: I certainly do not think that there are things in here that will hinder that, and there are some things that will help. More broadly, a lot of the measures that would help with high and rising standards in schools sit outside schools, perhaps in the Government’s broader opportunity mission. That links to the previous discussion around broader children’s and family services, and children living in poverty. There is absolutely some helpful stuff here, but much of the answer probably lies in other parts of the Government’s work.

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[Amanda Martin]

Q I want to take a step back from where you would be involved. What do you think the impact will be of creating the duty of safeguarding partnership to make arrangements to establish a multi-agency child protection team?

Jacky Tiotto: It is a long way back from us, but I was a director of children’s services before this and we were always clamouring to have a much more formal arrangement with the police and with health, so this is a fantastic opportunity to get that resourced and to put child protection formally back on the platform where it was, which is multi-agency. We have “Working Together”, which is the best multi-agency guidance in the world, but it has been hard to express without mandation. So thumbs up!

[Ellie Chowns]

Q To follow up a little, do you think the Bill does enough to centre the voices of children ? You have talked particularly about that in terms of family decision making, but are there other aspects of the Bill where you would like to see amendments made?

Jacky Tiotto: Deprivation of liberty, definitely. May I say something about elective home education and also the Staying Close provision? The Bill’s intention to formalise elective home education is long overdue, and children’s views about that education should be well and truly sought before any decision is taken to permit it. It is a bit permissive at the minute, in terms of how section 47 is drafted: if the local authorities had cause to think that you had been, and now have established that you have been, significantly harmed or at risk of significant harm, then on no day of any week could it be okay for you to be out of sight being educated somewhere else.

I think it should be a flat no if you are on a child protection plan. If you are a child in need under section 17, there should be more regular review of the child in need plan if you are being electively home educated. But every time, that child should be asked how it is going: “Is this helping you, are you feeling safe?”

More generally, at every one of these points where we are mandating something about safety, the first thing should be: what is the view of the child? If the child cannot speak, or is a baby, then somebody with the ability to speak on their behalf should be asked. We should tick nothing off without that being the case.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q And Staying Close?

Jacky Tiotto: Again, another welcome introduction and formalisation. CAFCASS is involved with 25,000 children a year in public law proceedings. It would be nice if the drafters could require CAFCASS—at the end of proceedings, in its closing letter to the independent reviewing officer—to say, “We think, having come to know this child, that x, y, or z would be an appropriate provision for them in terms of Staying Close.” We will have got to know and had a relationship with that child throughout the proceedings.

The same could apply when we are asked to discharge care orders, which is 10% of our work—again, asking us to write back to the local authority as the child’s guardian and say, “This child will not benefit from being housed 45 miles away,” or “This child will need access to grandma.” Asking us to do that at the end of proceedings would be an important addition to regulations or guidance. We are a bit missed out from the process, and we bring that voice of the child.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q What about the idea of expanding Staying Put in addition to the expansion of Staying Close?

Jacky Tiotto: All good. It is the same thing.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q You would like to see that too.

Jacky Tiotto: Yes.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q Because that is missing from this Bill.

Jacky Tiotto: Yes, it is. I have worked with many children who are terrified of the cliff edge of 18; in fact, they start worrying about it at 16. It often blights the last few years of their care.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q What would you like to see, ideally?

Jacky Tiotto: The provision mandated to 21, everywhere. I will probably be shot for saying that—

[Ellie Chowns]

Q Or even beyond 21.

Jacky Tiotto: Well, yes.

[Catherine Atkinson]

Q We have seen the number of children in care rising really significantly. Looking at the child protection measures, the kinship clauses and the family group conferencing, what do you feel the overall impact of Bill will be on the numbers of children in care?

Jacky Tiotto: It is difficult. We have primary legislation in the Children Act 1989 that says that, in this country, we think the best place for children is growing up in their family or with relatives. When the 30-year review of the Children Act happened, people still signed up to that; this Bill definitely reminds us and provokes that intention again.

The difficulty is that the formality around protecting children is burdensome, rightly so. So in my view some of the construction of this has to be a bit more thoughtful about the children who are going to do well in their families and the children who are not going to stand a chance and need, quickly, to move to permanence and to other places.

Residential care is not doing particularly well for children with very special needs. We struggle to recruit foster carers because the resources around them are not there. It is the shape of what is around those other places, not residential care, that needs to be elevated, in order to reduce the number of children coming into care. Just having family group decision-making conferences or kinship alone is not enough; I do not know anyone saying it is.

I do not know how many of you are familiar with the chief social worker paper from a few years ago called “Care proceedings in England: the case for clear blue water”. A very good, strong case was made for, “Don’t come into court with children where it is going to end up either with them back at home or with a supervision order that gives no statutory power to the local authority. Come into court for the kids that really need a care order and protection and to go somewhere.” We could revisit the extent to which that is an effective situation.

A third of children who come into family proceedings now either remain at home or go back home. I make no judgment about that, but a third of children going through family proceedings is expensive. We need to think about what the point at issue was and what was needed at the time. Will the serving of that order deal with the problem at the time? Often, what has gone wrong in child protection will not be solved by just making a court order, particularly a supervision order. I could be here for a long time on that, but that is another Bill, probably another day.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Lizzi Collinge]

Q I want to talk about unregulated schools and the register of children not in school. I have seen evidence outside the Committee that shows that there are serious concerns about poor education in unregulated settings, as well as abuse and neglect. If you have any comments about what the problem is that the Bill is trying to solve, I and other members of the Committee would like to hear them. How will the new powers relating to unregulated schools allow you to protect children at risk of harm, specifically? Will they be an improvement on the current powers that you have?

Sir Martyn Oliver: To answer your last question first, absolutely: it is a significant improvement on our powers. Since 2016, we have carried out almost 1,400 criminal investigations into almost 1,300 unique unregistered settings. Not all investigations lead to an on-site inspection. We have carried out almost 900 on-site inspections and issued 200 warnings, meaning that in over one fifth of on-site inspections, we were able to secure sufficient evidence that a crime was being committed, despite our limited powers at that point and under the current legislation. We have worked with the Crown Prosecution Service to successfully prosecute seven cases, including a total of 21 individual convictions.

The new powers will significantly improve our ability to do that, and the speed at which we can do it. It is very difficult to carry out those investigations. It is incredibly resource-reliant and takes significant time—regularly between 12 and 24 months—if we can get it to that position. The changes will help to address those loopholes in the law, but we think that there are some areas for improvement. As I have said, the need to get a warrant in all cases will be incredibly bureaucratic and expensive for Ofsted. Obviously we want to do it with care—we do not want to break into people’s homes and inspect them—but on commercial premises we think that there is a more proportionate response, which will reduce bureaucracy, reduce the cost to Ofsted and allow us to focus on keeping children safe.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Q On balance, do you welcome the provisions in the Bill to ensure that all schools follow the national curriculum?

Lee Owston: Obviously there is a review, from Professor Becky Francis, of what the national curriculum will contain, and we are speaking frequently with members of that review. From an inspector’s position, it will always be about how providers are adhering to the legal requirements set by Government and Parliament. Obviously, we look forward to seeing what the Bill produces in how we then interact with it. In terms of a broad legal requirement, and what all children as a minimum should be able to access, I would support that statement.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that brings us to the end of this session, and we will move on to the next panel of witnesses.

Examination of Witnesses

Mark Russell, Lynn Perry and Katharine Sacks-Jones gave evidence.

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[Ellie Chowns]

Q Lynn, what is your view on the fact that the Bill does not contain provisions to give children equal protection from violence to adults?

Lynn Perry: We think that this is an opportunity for that to be addressed in legislation. As a charity that works across the devolved nations, we have obviously seen change in other areas. Now is the opportunity for us to address the defence of reasonable chastisement in legislation and give children equal protection. It is important to note that values, public attitudes and the way in which we frame childhood have changed significantly, so to consider that further would be very welcome.

[Ellie Chowns]

Q So you would like to see the Bill amended in that way?

Lynn Perry: We would.

[Amanda Martin]

Q Keeping children safe and safeguarding are key priorities that you guys have a lot of expertise in. Many experts have talked about the widening attainment gap and the rising number of children out of school. Most of them are our most disadvantaged and vulnerable. What difference do you think the Bill’s provisions will make to those children on things such as admissions, the ability of local authorities to plan school places, and collaborative working across local authorities and across services, so that they have an appropriate and safe school place?

Mark Russell: There is a great deal in the Bill that will improve safeguarding arrangements for children, which is really important. The role of the local authority is critical, and local authorities are under enormous pressure. We all work with local authorities right around the country. We hear from directors of children’s services and their teams about the sheer pressure.

Alongside that, we need to look at how local authorities commission services for children and young people. I always find it slightly bemusing that local authorities can commission a bin service for 10 years, but cannot a commission a children’s service for two years. That would not cost the taxpayer any more money. If we improved the length of the periods at which commissioning were done, it would allow organisations such as ours to invest in services and teams to build stronger services locally. The environment in which local government finance works does not make our lives any easier in supporting children and young people.

Lynn Perry: We have to think about this pre-school. Early intervention in early years services is absolutely critical to ensure school readiness for children. That is not just for those children in educational terms, but for their families to be able to establish a network of support as a parent or carer and to access universal and targeted provision. We need to take a whole-family approach to support children to start well in school. What that requires, of course, is a significant shift in investment. Currently, most of the spending in the children’s social care budget is on late interventions and the children in-care population. We need to re-engineer and reset the system so that there is more investment at a much earlier stage. All of that helps with school readiness, attendance and attainment. As we know, schools are at the heart of a lot of that multi-agency working across communities and the safeguarding system, in terms of their opportunity to identify children, so it is important that children have a positive experience of starting school and staying in school.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Catherine Atkinson]

Giving that discretion is really important, but by saying “should”, amendment 37 would give a directive to the local authority to first look at including the child, and only reject that in circumstances where it can be demonstrated that including them would be harmful and inappropriate. In my view, that fetters the discretion and pushes things into a potentially harmful situation, especially given the number of children that we are talking about—not younger children, but definitely those at the upper end. In my view, we should not fetter the discretion. I do not think that that kind of directive is helpful in those circumstances.

On amendment 18, I do not need to be told how important it is that childcare proceedings are conducted quickly and without delay. At the moment, the 26-week time limit set out in the Children and Families Act 2014 is not met in over two thirds of cases. I think we are averaging 41 weeks—which is better than last year, when it was nearly 45 weeks—and that includes cases where everything is agreed and not contested.

My former colleagues are regularly involved in cases lasting over a year and some lasting over two years. I do not think that, in the 10 years since the 26-week limit was enacted, the majority of cases have ever been completed within six months. The amendment is therefore somewhat incongruous given what we have seen over the last 10 years—I think that a number of my former colleagues would consider it brass neck.

The amendment does not do anything to ensure that we deal with cases rapidly, because the 26 weeks starts when an application is made, but the whole point of the clause is that family group decision making needs to take place before an application is made. In my view, the amendment does nothing to restrict the time to 26 weeks, because clause 1 does not have an impact on that timescale at all, and it certainly does not prevent local authorities from holding family group decision making earlier.

I am somewhat provoked to note that it was the coalition Government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 that cut all legal aid for private family law cases unless there are allegations of abuse. Out-of-court or pre-proceeding discussions and settlements, and the involvement of professionals, have therefore become far harder since 2012.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I rise to speak to amendment 49 regarding family group decision making at the point of family reunification.

Reunification—the process of returning a child in care to their family—is the most common route by which children leave care, accounting for 27% of all children who left care in 2023. It is also one of the most sensitive and significant transitions a child can experience. When done well, it can offer children stability, security and permanence at home with their family, but too often the reunifications fail. In fact, one in three children who return home then re-enter the care system, so thousands of children are enduring yet more displacement, disrupted attachments, instability and broken trust.

The human cost of those failed reunifications is immeasurable, but the financial cost is also stark. Failed reunifications cost the public purse £370 million annually—money that would be better spent supporting families in the first place. Research tells us that too many reunifications break down because families do not receive the support that they need to make that process successful, tut there is no national strategy for supporting reunifications. Support across the country is inconsistent, and alarmingly, 78% of authorities report that the support that they offer is inadequate—the authorities report that themselves.

Amendment 49 provides a clear, practical, evidence-based solution—effectively a mirror to the Government’s clause 1. The amendment would require local authorities to offer family group decision making no later than one month after the discharge of a care order for the purpose of family reunification. Of course, in practice, it is envisaged that the family group decision-making process would be offered before the child returns home to support that return.

As the Committee has already heard and discussed, family group decision making is a powerful tool. It brings families together to identify solutions, develop a plan and build a network of support around the child. It can empower families to take ownership of the challenges that they face, and foster collaborative work with professionals that promotes the safety and wellbeing of the child while also amplifying the child’s voice. My argument is that that is as important towards the end of a care process as it is at the beginning.

Family group decision making is well established and recognised as best practice by professionals. We already have clear evidence on its effectiveness, and we are awaiting more, as the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said. However, the lack of a statutory duty to offer it has led to patchy practice across the country. One third of local authorities do not offer family group decision making at all during reunification. Amendment 49 addresses that gap. It would ensure that every family in England has the opportunity to benefit from that approach. The requirement in the amendment is to offer it; it does not impose any sort of time limit.

Some Members might worry about the practicalities or cost of introducing the duty, but as I have already explained, the breakdown of family reunification is an incredibly costly process, both financially and for the child’s welfare. The amendment is a financial cost-saving measure as well as a child-centred one. Research shows that providing support to meet a family’s needs during reunification costs just £7,857 per child. By contrast, the cost of a single reunification breakdown is £105,000. Amendment 49 would be

The amendment is practical and allows for professional judgment, recognising that every family is different. Where a meeting is not in a child’s best interests, the local authority would be exempt from the duty to make the offer, and that flexibility ensures that the needs of children always come first. The amendment also complements existing provisions in the Bill. It effectively mirrors the duty to offer family group decision making before care proceedings, and therefore offers a coherent support framework at both ends of the care process—effectively bookending it. It brings much-needed consistency to a fragmented system.

With more children in care than ever before, as we have noted, and with children’s services under immense strain, the amendment represents a real opportunity. By embedding family group decision making we can enable more families to stay together, reduce the number of children returning to care, which is an incredibly damaging process, and relieve pressure on an overstretched system, all while delivering better outcomes for those children. This is about fairness, consistency, investing in what works and ensuring that all reunifying families, not just some, are given the help they need. It is about recognising the importance of successful reunification within the care process. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections on the proposal and the other questions raised this morning.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Of course I agree with and entirely support the spirit of what the Government are doing. It forms part of the strand of development intended in the “Stable Homes, Built on Love” strategy; across the House, we share similar motivations on all these matters.

On the comments from the hon. Member for North Herefordshire on reunification and amendment 49, I do not think an amendment to a Bill is the moment to introduce such a thing, but I am sure that in their continuing work, Ministers and officials will look at how the reunification process can be improved for all the reasons that she rightly gave.

I have a couple of questions on the inclusion of children in meetings, which is relevant to clause stand part and to amendment 36. My first question is: what guidance will accompany the new provisions? In some cases it will be obvious that a child should not be present, but beyond that it is perhaps difficult to generalise. Of course we trust professional judgment, but I wonder about the extent to which further guidance may be useful. I am thinking particularly of children with learning disabilities, who sometimes feel that things are done that affect their lives in a big way and they have less of a say than other children, because somebody has made that judgment when perhaps they did not need to. Secondly—this is a minor point in the grand scheme of things—I wonder why the legislation and the explanatory notes do not say that a child may be present for part of the meeting. It may be appropriate to have part of it with the child and part of it without them.

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[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

It is an honour to serve under you as Chair, Sir Christopher, and to be a part of this thoughtful and considered Committee, which is taking this landmark legislation through Parliament. I thank hon. Members for the spirit in which they have discussed the safeguarding aspects of the Bill. I appreciate the support that has been expressed, and thank Members for their questions, concerns and amendments, which I will seek to address.

Amendments 36 and 37 stand in the name of the hon. Member for Twickenham but were presented by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire. I thank him for his support for the clause and acknowledgment that family group decision making is a family-led process. A family network is unique to every child, so we decided not to be prescriptive about who should attend the meetings. That will be assessed and determined by the local authority, which will consider who it is appropriate to invite, and we will publish updated statutory guidance to make it clear that the local authority should engage with the full scope of the family network. That should take place with a view to supporting the wellbeing and welfare of the child, because the child’s voice and views are an integral part of the family group decision-making process.

The process is, by its very nature, child-centric, and is designed with the best interests of the child in mind. The meeting facilitator will talk to families and the child about how best the child might be involved in the meeting. I recognise some of the points made about the extent to which the child should take part in the process, but the child’s participation will clearly depend on several factors, including their age and their level of understanding, and an independent advocate may also be used to help the child to express their views.

As has been set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North, in some cases it may not be appropriate for the child to attend. However, there is time for the child to voice their experiences or concerns through the dedicated preparation time for those meetings. The facilitator will take further action where they think it may be required if they think that there are safeguarding concerns, and we are confident that local authorities will continue to be guided by what is in the best interests of the child. For the reasons that I have outlined, I ask the hon. Member for Twickenham not to press her amendments.

Amendment 18 has been tabled by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston. I thank him for the spirit in which he presented his amendments and put on record his concerns about the situation that children find themselves in and wanting the best outcome for them. The amendment relates to the 26-week rule for children subject to family court proceedings. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Children and Families Act 2014 introduced the 26-week limit on courts to complete care and supervision proceedings when they are considering whether a child should be taken into care or placed with an alternative carer. I reassure him that we prioritise reducing unnecessary delay in family courts and securing timely outcomes for children and families.

Clause 1 relates to a specific and critical point before court proceedings are initiated. It gives parents or those with parental responsibility the legal right to a family-led meeting when they are at the point of the risk of entering into care proceedings. There is robust evidence to show that strengthening the offer of family group decision making at that crucial stage will in fact reduce applications to the family courts and prevent children from entering the care system at all.

As much as we acknowledge the concern raised, we are confident that no provisions in clause 1 would result in an extension to the statutory 26-week limit for care proceedings, which starts when the application for a care or supervision order is made. We think it is right that families are given the time and support to form a family-led plan. By strengthening the offer of family group decision making for families on the edge of care, concerns about children’s safety and wellbeing can be addressed swiftly, with the support of skilled professionals, and avoid escalation into potentially lengthy care proceedings. We want to avoid missing those opportunities for children to remain living safely with their families, so the child’s welfare and best interests are very much at the heart of clause 1.

If the local authority believes that the child’s circumstances or welfare needs might have changed at any point during pre-proceedings and it would no longer be in their best interests to facilitate the meeting, the court proceedings can be initiated immediately. The local authority should always act in accordance with the child’s best interests. Indeed, that family work can continue throughout court proceedings being initiated, and family group decision making can also continue. For the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston not to press his amendment.

Amendment 49 is in the name of the hon. Member for North Herefordshire. Clause 1 gives parents or those with parental responsibility the legal right to the family-led meeting at the specific and critical point, which I referenced, when they are at risk of entering into care proceedings. As I said, we have the clear evidence to show that involvement of the wider family network in planning and decision making at that pre-proceedings stage can divert children from care and keep more families together.

Although clause 1 focuses on the critical point at the edge of care, we already encourage local authorities to offer these meetings as early as possible and throughout the time that the child is receiving help, support and protection, including as a possible route to reunification with their birth parents or a family network where appropriate. We are clear in guidance and regulations that, where a child is returning home to their family after a period in care, local authorities should consider what help and support they will need to make reunification a success and set it out in writing. We will continue to promote the wider use of family group decision making, including by updating statutory guidance where appropriate and through best practice support. We believe that this legislation is a transformative step change that will be helpful in expanding these services for the benefit of children and families right across the country.

I turn to some of the specific questions that have been raised by Members, some of which I have addressed in my comments.

[Ellie Chowns]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I may well be coming to the hon. Member’s question, if I can pre-empt her. If not, she is welcome to intervene again.

On reunification specifically, “Working together to safeguard children 2023” was updated to ask local authorities to consider

“whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.”

It made it clear that family group decision making cannot be conducted before a child becomes looked after, but that it should still be considered as an option later. Family group decision making should be considered at all stages of a child’s journey in reunification with birth parents and the family network, wherever it is appropriate. Although the duty will make it mandatory to offer that family group decision making at the pre-proceeding stage, as I said, we will also be encouraging local authorities to offer it throughout the child’s journey and repeat it as necessary, because we encourage a family-first culture.

[Ellie Chowns]

Will the Minister respond directly to the thrust of amendment 49? The Bill is shifting from a position where the consideration of family group decision making is already encouraged to a statutory requirement before starting care proceedings. Amendment 49 asks for a mirroring of that at the potential end of care proceedings. Why does the Minister feel that it is important to move to a statutory footing at the start but not the end, particularly given the statistics that I have referenced on the frequency of breakdown? Would it not be entirely consistent for the Bill to specify this—bookending both ends of the care process?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I do think I have responded to the hon. Lady’s specific request, and explained why we are mandating and putting on to a statutory footing the requirement to offer family group decision making at this crucial point before care proceedings. We obviously encourage local authorities throughout their work with children in these circumstances to take a family-first approach and to offer family conferencing. Indeed, family group decision making can be used at any stage of a child’s journey through their relationship with the local authority. However, our decision to mandate it at this crucial point is very much based on the evidence that this reduces the number of children who end up going into care proceedings, and indeed into care.

A lot of issues were raised and I will do my very best to cover them. The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston raised private law proceedings. The Ministry of Justice offers a voucher scheme to provide a contribution of up to £500 towards the mediation costs for eligible cases, supporting people in resolving their family law disputes outside of court. Similarly to family group decision making, family mediation is a process that uses trained, independent mediators and helps families to sort arrangements out. I take on board the concerns he has raised that all children should be able to benefit from family group decision making where possible. On the impact assessment, as we said in the second evidence session on Tuesday, the Regulatory Policy Committee is considering the Bill’s impact assessments and we will publish them shortly and as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Ellie Chowns, do you wish to press your amendment to a vote?

[Ellie Chowns]

Chair, may I ask a question of the Minister?

[The Chair]

No; we have finished debating this group of amendments now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

I wish to ask the Minister if she would meet with me to discuss this matter.

[The Chair]

You can ask them later on some other issue—I am sure the Minister will always be willing to meet you. But do you wish to press your amendment to a vote?

[Ellie Chowns]

No.

[The Chair]

Okay, so that does not matter.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Inclusion of childcare and education agencies in safeguarding arrangements

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Ellie Chowns, do you wish to participate in this debate?

[Ellie Chowns]

indicated dissent.

[The Chair]

Just to be helpful, last time you said you wanted to speak after the debate had closed. What you could have done was to participate again in the debate before it ended. It is open to anybody who is a member of the Committee to speak more than once in a debate—there is no limit on the number of times you can speak in a debate, but you cannot speak after the question has been put.

If you wanted to tell the Minister that you were dissatisfied or that you wanted to have a meeting, then the time to have done that would have been during the debate. At the end, you could have caught my eye and you would have been able to participate. I am trying to help people so that nobody feels that they are being excluded, because I know how difficult it must be for new Members who have not got the support of an established network in this place.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

Of course, and for many people that is the right thing to do. There are mid-career and later-career programmes for coming into teaching and I want people to do those more and more. Sometimes, however, people come from abroad, and it could be from a country with which we do not necessarily have mutual recognition, or they might come from the independent sector, so they might have taught for many years and be an outstanding practitioner. The hon. Gentleman also said if he went to the mechanic, he would not want someone who is just fascinated by engines, and I understand that entirely. However, if someone wanted to learn football, and they had the opportunity to learn from a professional footballer, although not as the only PE teacher—

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

rose—

[Lizzi Collinge]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

As the parent of a former footballer, I know that the Football Association does not let people coach football, even Saturday league, without being a qualified coach, so the right hon. Member’s analogy falls down.

[Damian Hinds]

She makes my point for me.

[Ellie Chowns]

No, I am making my point, which is that it is entirely reasonable to require that people who are in an educational role are either qualified to take that role or undergoing the process of qualification. If somebody wants to be a teacher and wants to contribute to educating our young people, I see no reason why they would not want to make sure that they have the skills to do that. [Interruption.] I let the right hon. Gentleman finish his sentences.

[Damian Hinds]

I think the hon. Lady makes my point for me: it is possible to train children to play football without a PGCE.

[Ellie Chowns]

When coaching young people playing football at Saturday clubs, the Football Association is the relevant regulatory body. When teaching in a school, the relevant regulatory body is that which gives qualified teacher status.

[Damian Hinds]

Yes, but that does not change the fact that individuals, perhaps including the hon. Lady’s son—I do not know her son; I do not know his circumstances or his school career—may be perfectly capable of helping kids learn how to play football without having a PGCE, and it happens—

[Ellie Chowns]

rose—

[Lizzi Collinge]

rose—

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

I am not sure that the hon. Lady’s Front-Bench colleagues will necessarily thank her for making that intervention. That view is held by some. Sir Christopher would rightly admonish me were we to get into a whole debate about PSHE or RSHE, but it is true that the RSHE curriculum covers a range of things that, rightly, children must learn about as they prepare for the adult world, develop their sense of self and their place in society and, crucially, learn respect and kindness towards others, along with valuing all individuals. There is also a degree of flexibility within the curriculum, because at the end of the day there are 21,500 schools in the country, and there are schools with different character and different intakes. I am sure the hon. Lady is not trying to make my point for me, but if we make the national curriculum more rigid, we actually run into more problems, rather than solve them.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

You said that the more rigid you make the national curriculum, the more problems we will have, but we are not debating making the national curriculum more rigid. We are debating whether the national curriculum should apply to all schools. A minute ago, you said that the ability not to use the national curriculum is a safety valve against politicisation, but that goes against everything you said in the previous 10 minutes, which was all about the flexibilities that are inherent in the national curriculum, of which you gave some excellent examples.

[The Chair]

Order. Please try to avoid using the word “you”.

[Ellie Chowns]

I am so sorry.

[Damian Hinds]

I do not think those things are in conflict. My point was that the national curriculum, as it was set up, is quite loose. It did not have to be, it does not have to be now and it does not have to be in five or 10 years. It can be written exactly as Ministers at the time wish to write it. Although the hon. Lady says we are not debating whether to make the national curriculum more rigid, actually we might be—we do not know. I will come to that in a moment.

I was saying—you will be pleased to know, Sir Christopher, that I do want to accelerate—that the flexibility can be an instrument for school improvement, either for entire year groups, for the entire school or, indeed, on a longer basis, for a nurture group or a group or individual who, for whatever reason, needs additional support. It also means that schools might specialise somewhat, and that they might innovate without having, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston rightly said, to overthink about whether they are complying exactly with this or that specification.

At a time when we are rightly concerned about attendance numbers, it has been suggested to me that making adherence to the national curriculum more specified, and possibly the curriculum itself being made more rigid, could be injurious to school attendance or inclusion in mainstream schooling if it makes more children feel rejected, uncomfortable or unhappy at school and so seek education either at home or in alternative settings.

The crucial point is that, whether schools have innovated with an academy trust curriculum, decided to deviate to support individual groups for a period of time, or specialised somewhat, they will all be judged by Ofsted on the simple requirement of having a broad and balanced curriculum. For most schools the easiest way to comply with having a broad and balanced curriculum is to follow the national curriculum—but there can be other ways. Again, like my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, I am left wondering what the problem the Government are trying to solve is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

For all the reasons that I gave, it does apply. Ofsted requires a broad and balanced curriculum from every school, and the vast majority of the time the vast majority of schools say that that is the national curriculum, but some of them may innovate and deviate. They may need to do something different to support children or they may be in a school improvement phase. All those are good reasons. In a system where we trust school leaders and teachers to do what is right for the kids in front of them, those are all reasons to have some flexibility.

[Ellie Chowns]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the national curriculum is a floor, not a ceiling?

[Damian Hinds]

Sort of. It is not really a floor or a ceiling at the moment; it is a very loose framework that says, “These are the things at key stages 1 to 4 that one should cover.” It is not really a floor because it does not say, “You must learn these things. You may learn others.” It says, “These are the broad categories of things that you must learn.”

[Ellie Chowns]

“Use the scaffolding.”

[Damian Hinds]

Now we are on to modern methods of construction: scaffolding or a floor? I do not know. I will give way to the hon. Member for Bournemouth East, then I promise I will move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

Let me be clear: I have not referred to any academy leaders or professionals in our education system as expressing views that are hysterical. I have referred to hon. Members, and I was very clear about that in my comments. I have seen far too much of that in this Committee—putting words into Members’ mouths. It is not respectful to the people we are here to represent and serve, who are working extremely hard in our school system and contributing constructively to this debate. We are open to feedback, which is why we have two consultations out on a number of the measures being considered as part of our reforms. We absolutely welcome feedback; we welcome challenge. Actually, the level of challenge reflects how important this is to the people who contribute to the discussion and debate. The hysteria I was talking about referred to hon. Members and their characterisation of some of the changes.

For the sake of a reality check, let me just say that in 2022—Members should note these statistics—of primary schools in multi-academy trusts, 64% were good and 15% were outstanding; in single-academy trusts, 67% were good and 27% were outstanding; and in maintained schools, 76% were good and 16% were outstanding. There is no difference for children’s outcomes depending on the school’s status. This is not about academies versus maintained schools or anything like it; it is about making sure that we have a framework that serves every child and that every child has a core offer as part of their education. To treat it like some sort of terrible, terrifying prospect is a mischaracterisation of the reality of both the school system and the changes we are looking to make.

[Ellie Chowns]

I thank the Minister for the statistics she has presented, which echo the point I was about to ask her about. Would like to challenge—as she just has—the assertion from the Conservative Benches that academies are somehow better performing? Would she agree that there is no clear evidence, as suggested by Professor Stephen Gorard, who absolutely knows what he is talking about, that academies as a whole do better than maintained schools? An ideological commitment to academies, based on a set of cherry-picked examples of individual schools, is unhelpful to the tenor of the debate. We should focus on ensuring that every child in every type of school gets an excellent education.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. She took the words out of my mouth earlier when she challenged the right hon. Member for East Hampshire. The national curriculum offer and everything we are presenting as part of our reforms provide a floor, but not a ceiling on ambition, innovation, flexibility and the ability to give an outstanding and exemplary education to the children in this country. We celebrate and value success for our children, in whatever form it comes, whether that is an academy or a local authority-maintained school. Indeed, success comes in all those forms.

All we wish to see, through this fairly straightforward measure, is a knowledge-rich education—in answer to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston—and a curriculum that is cutting-edge and that ensures high and rising standards for every child. That is why we launched the curriculum and assessment review to take the advice of experts on bringing the curriculum up to date. It is why we want to see the national curriculum as the experience that every child should have, and the framework that every child should experience throughout their primary and secondary education, regardless of the type of state school that they attend. And it is why we will be asking Members to support clause stand part.

Before the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston asks, I will respond to his question on UTCs because—

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

We have been on quite a journey on this clause. At the Education Committee on 15 January, the Secretary of State said that critics of the Bill were confused. She said:

“It has become clear to me that there has been some confusion and some worry about what I have said in this area, so today I want to be absolutely clear that all schools will have full flexibility to innovate with a floor and no ceiling on what that means.”

The fact that, subsequent to that, we have pages and pages of Government amendments to their own Bill suggests pretty powerfully that it was not school leaders and critics of the Bill who were confused.

This is a very significant measure. The impact assessment notes that an Employer Link survey conducted in 2021 found that over 28% of employers varied in some way from the school teachers’ pay and conditions document. Freedoms have been quite widely used. As Sir Jon Coles said in evidence to this Committee, just because people are using the freedoms does not necessarily mean that they know they are using them. Some of the innovations are great—they are things we all want for our teachers and schools. For example, United Learning, Jon Coles’s trust, was paying 6.5% on top of the national pay and conditions to retain good people. Dixons was innovating with a really interesting nine-day fortnight, so that teachers in really tough areas got more preparation time. This is really powerful innovation that we do not want to take away.

The Secretary of State called for a floor not a ceiling and said that she wanted

“that innovation and flexibility to be available to all schools regardless of type.”

We think that is a good principle and we agree about extending it to all schools. That is why our new clause 7 would extend freedoms over pay and conditions to local authority maintained schools as well. Given that the Government said previously that it would be good to have the same freedoms for everybody, we assume that they will accept the new clause so that we can have the floor not a ceiling for everybody, not just academies.

If a floor not a ceiling is right for teachers, surely it is right in principle for the other half of the schools workforce. Surely, school support staff—actually, they are the majority of the workforce in schools—are not worth any less than teachers, and the same principles should apply to them. This is critical. Lots of trusts are using the advantages of scale to make back-office savings and efficiencies, and ploughing them back into additional benefits and pay to support really good staff. I hope that Ministers will support our new clause 64, when we come to it, and accept that the principle that they have applied to teachers should apply to everybody else in our schools, too.

[Ellie Chowns]

I warmly welcome the proposal to ensure that there is a level playing field for pay for teachers who teach in different types of schools. Does the Minister consider that now is the time to take a similar approach to addressing pay for leaders of schools? I found it pretty jaw dropping to hear recently that the pay and pension of a CEO of a well-known multi-academy trust topped £600,000 per year. I took the trouble of having a look at that particular academy trust and found that it has 168 people on salaries of over £100,000, and it covers just 55 schools.

It is clearly not sustainable for the pay of leaders of multi-academy trusts to continue to increase in proportion to the number of schools in those trusts. If that approach was taken to salary setting, the Minister herself would be on millions of pounds a year. We had an interesting discussion earlier about the difference between correlation and causation. There is worrying evidence—I have seen interesting analysis from Warwick Mansell, for example—showing correlation between the prevalence of non-QTS teachers and high pupil-teacher ratios in multi-academy trusts and high levels of executive pay. That strongly suggests that such trusts are diverting or channelling more funding into higher executive pay rather than frontline teaching, which is surely of concern.

While I welcome the moves to ensure equitability across teacher salaries in all types of state school, is it not time to address pay inequalities and excessive pay in certain leadership functions in multi-academy trusts in particular? I note that the Public Accounts Committee drew attention back in 2022 to the DFE not having a handle on executive pay in the sector. I would warmly welcome the Minister’s comments on whether the Government have any intention to take action to address this.

[Amanda Martin]

It is good to follow the hon. Member for North Herefordshire. A lot of this argument has just been about pay, but we are actually considering schoolteachers’ pay and conditions. We need to take into account all elements of schoolteachers’ pay and conditions. The hon. Member spoke about executive pay of CEOs. There is an academy trust—United Learning trust—where many staff cease to get sick pay above statutory levels after six weeks. That does not strike me as likely to attract and retain high-quality staff. People may fall ill through no fault of their own, and this is not the right approach to take when we have a recruitment and retention crisis.

The schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document allows for recruitment and retention points, SEN points and teaching and learning responsibility points to be awarded. It also allows for teachers working in schools to rise up without an incremental scale, unlike me when I entered teaching and took an annual increment to rise up the scale. We can allow for teachers to be paid at a high level, should there be a need and desire for that. That includes the upper pay scale. Members who were not in the profession may not know that the previous Government introduced that with five elements, but those were quickly reduced to three to keep good and experienced teachers in the classroom.

On the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions element, with regard to flexibility it covers 1,265 hours. That can be negotiated in an academy or maintained school according to what works best for individual teachers or the school. I have an example from my city. Several years ago, through the narrowing of the curriculum, GCSE dance was removed from it. The school worked with the dance teacher, who still did her 1,265 hours, but moved her timing, because she did it as an after-school element. There is still the 1,265 element and flexibility. However, the provisions will mean that wherever people teach, in whatever organisation, if they are in a school that is funded by taxpayers—funded by the Government—they will have national standards for their pay and their terms and conditions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

Fortnight. Indeed, as in the interesting example given by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North, it is right that schools are able to find new and innovative ways of ensuring that they retain and attract the teachers who we know will drive the high and rising standards that we want across our schools. I hope I have answered all the questions.

[Ellie Chowns]

rose—

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Lady asked me a question.

[Ellie Chowns]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Does she agree with me that there is a case for establishing a national pay framework for academy trust leaders, given the huge and rising salaries?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution, and I recognise the concerns that she has set out. It is essential that we have the best people to lead our schools. That is how we drive and raise standards. But we are absolutely clear that academy trust salaries must be justifiable and must reflect the individual responsibility, and also local recruitment and retention needs. The Academy Trust Handbook gives academy trusts the authority to set their own pay. Trusts must ensure their decisions about levels of executive pay, including salary and other benefits,

“follow a robust evidence-based process and are a reasonable and defensible reflection of the individual’s role and responsibilities.”

We work with trusts on executive pay. Where there is an insufficient demonstration of value for money, or no direct link to improving outcomes for students, and where executive pay in an academy trust is found to be an outlier when compared with similar academy trusts, the Department engages with the trust and assesses compliance with the Academy Trust Handbook. The hon. Lady’s concerns are noted and, where required, the process will be followed.

[Ellie Chowns]

rose—

[Catherine McKinnell]

Does the hon. Lady have another question?

[Ellie Chowns]

Just to expand on that, I would like to ask the Minister whether she thinks it is reasonable and justifiable that an academy trust leader has a salary of over £600,000, when a leader in a local authority with responsibility for an equivalent or larger number of schools would have a salary nowhere near?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Lady has made her point. I will not comment on individual circumstances or individual trust leaders—I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to do so. But she has made her point and it is an important one that is reflected in the processes in the Academy Trust Handbook and the processes that are in place regarding these issues. We will keep it under review as a Department. Obviously the changes that we are bringing will have an impact in terms of setting a more equal balance between the approaches of academies and maintained schools in pay and conditions. That is the intention of the clause.

I hope I have set out clearly how our amendments to the existing clause 45 and subsequent secondary legislation will deliver on our commitment to a floor with no ceiling. It will enable good practice and innovation to continue and will be used by all state schools to recruit and retain the best teachers that they need for our children. I therefore urge members of the Committee to support the amendments, but in this context the current clause 45 should not stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

I warmly welcome the provision in clause 47. The Liberal Democrats have long called for far greater co-operation between local authorities and schools on admissions and place planning. This is even more important now as we see falling school rolls, which is a particularly acute problem in London. It is the case in other parts of the country as well, but in my own local authority, eight reception classes were closed in primary schools in, I think, the last academic year. At the moment, we have high demand for our secondaries and falling demand for our primaries. Over the years, that will feed through into secondary schools, which is where most of our academies sit. We must ensure that academies or schools are working with the local authority on place planning. Having a massive surplus of places in such a cash-constrained environment is neither realistic or desirable.

I would add just one caveat from talking to the Confederation of School Trusts and the evidence we heard from Sir John Coles. They all welcome this particular provision, but Sir John Coles said that schools and local authorities need clear guidance on how this will work in practice. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on what guidance will be issued.

[Ellie Chowns]

I too absolutely welcome this new duty to co-operate. It is really important in the context of the problems that competition over people’s heads has led to. I am, however, like others, a bit concerned about the vagueness of the way that it is specified in the legislation. I feel that it does not make it clear enough what the duty to co-operate actually means. Would the Minister consider making it more clear, such as specifying that the local authority becomes the admissions authority for all schools in the area? Would the Government also consider reforming the legacy of partial selection that is still there for some schools? Arguably, we should reform aptitude-based tests and other admissions tests, which evidence shows have led to inequalities in admissions.

[Catherine Atkinson]

The Bill represents a really important opportunity to strengthen the partnership working between schools and local authorities. As well as visiting schools across my constituency of Derby North, I visited Derby College and our university technical college—UTC. In looking at the opportunities and benefits that can be brought by better co-operation, would the Minister consider encouraging local authorities to assess fully 14 to 16 provision across all providers, to ensure that any gaps or barriers to accessing all those opportunities are considered? Could there also be potential consideration of offering opportunities for young people to study and train for part of the week in college settings? There is a real opportunity for our young people when we have better collaboration and co-operation on admissions.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Munira Wilson]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, adding the Liberal Democrats’ support for putting equal protection into law for children. I do not understand why we would have a different level of protection for adults versus children. They are the most vulnerable children in our society. The Children’s Commissioner and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have been very clear that children should be protected. This is not seeking to interfere with parents in terms of how they discipline their children; it is about protecting our most vulnerable. The Children’s Commissioner has strongly called for this, particularly in the wake of the tragic case of Sara Sharif.

I really hope, when the Minister says that the Government will actively look at this during this Parliament, that that is the case. I suspect that there are Members in all parts of the House—I note that the new clause has cross-party support—who will continue to press her on this matter, because it is a basic issue of children’s rights and equal protection in law.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I rise to speak to demonstrate the cross-party support that has already been referred to for new clause 10 and consequential amendment 11 in the name of the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato), and I would like to start by congratulating and thanking her for her important work on this issue over many years.

Giving children equal protection from assault cannot happen soon enough. Although we tabled amendment 11 as a probing amendment, I cannot urge the Government strongly enough to grasp this opportunity, in this Bill on children’s wellbeing, to take this forward and put it into law.

Taking the essential step of giving children equal protection from assault has very widespread support not only among the general public, but among all sorts of organisations that advocate and work on behalf of children, including the NSPCC, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Parenting and Family Research Alliance and the Children’s Commissioner, to name just a few. We heard from the Children’s Commissioner herself in oral and written evidence just how strongly she feels about this matter. I share her view that it is totally unacceptable that in 2025, children have less protection from assault under English law than adults do. The existence of the “reasonable punishment” defence perpetuates ambiguity in the law. It leaves children exposed to potential harm and undermines efforts to safeguard their wellbeing. New clause 10 would remove this outdated defence and provide clarity, consistency, and equal protection for children under the law.

The Minister talked about wanting to wait until we have evidence from Wales, and of course, as she acknowledges, it is only in England and Northern Ireland that children do not have this protection. Scotland and Wales have already passed legislation on this matter—indeed, Scotland did before Wales, in 2020. The Minister mentioned waiting for evidence to come from Wales as to the impact of this. There is very clear evidence—worldwide, in fact—on the benefits of giving children the same protection from violence as adults. I believe there are 65 countries worldwide that give that protection, and there are decades of evidence on that topic. I am sure she has received that evidence and I warmly invite her to peruse it very carefully.

Many studies show that physical punishment is not only ineffective at managing children’s behaviour, which is what some parents may intend, but actively harmful. It is associated with increased behavioural problems, increased risks of mental health issues and increased risks of more serious assault. The current, grimly outdated legal framework complicates the matter of addressing improving safeguarding efforts and makes it harder for professionals to assess and effectively address risks to children. The Minister referenced the roles of professionals in safeguarding children, and there is significant testimony from those professionals about how unhelpful this ambiguity in the law is. Fundamentally, there is an inequality here. If an adult hits an adult, it is assault; if an adult hits a child, they can claim the defence of reasonable punishment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

I think I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that that is not the case. The inclusion of similar powers is common and well-precedented in legislation. Powers to make consequential amendments can be found in several other Government Bills, such as the Renters’ Rights Bill and the Employment Rights Bill, as well as in Acts presented under the previous Administration, such as the Health and Care Act 2022, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is fully supportive of.

I turn to new clause 10 and the contributions from hon. Members. I absolutely appreciate the case that is being made, which is why we are open-minded on the issue, but we do not intend to bring forward legislation imminently. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire spoke about the successful implementation in Wales. I am interested in how she knows that to be the case, because we are awaiting the publication of the impact assessment. We are very keen that legislation is evidence-based and has its intended effect. That is why we are waiting for the evidence that will come from Wales.

The hon. Member mentioned a number of international examples. I have an example from New Zealand, which removed the reasonable punishment defence in 2007. Data suggests that 13 cases were investigated between 2007 and 2009, with one prosecution. It is important that we look at how this measure works within the context of each country that it is applying it. Obviously, we will look very closely at the implementation in Wales—the impact it has and the difference it makes—and will also then look at how that will apply specifically within an England context before proceeding with legislation.

[Ellie Chowns]

There are two points that I would want to make. Is the Minister really arguing that whether we should protect children from violence depends on whether an impact assessment shows that there are a certain number of prosecutions or whatever? Is this not about the fundamental equality of protecting children in the same way that we give adults legal protection against assault?

Secondly, the impact of giving that equal protection is surely not something that should be measured in the sense of how many prosecutions there have been over how many years. This is not about getting more prosecutions; it is about shifting the culture as a whole to recognise that there is no justification for violence against children—none.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Keeping children safe could not be more important, and it could not be a greater priority for this Government. The question is how that is best achieved. That is the evidence that we are awaiting from Wales—to see how impactful the change made there has been.

I will give another example, from the Republic of Ireland, which removed the reasonable punishment defence in 2015. There is limited data on the impact, but a poll in 2020 suggested that a relatively high acceptance of slapping children remained.

Absolute clarity and an evidence-based approach is what the Government seek to take. That is why, within this legislation, we have absolutely prioritised real, tangible measures, which we can put into practice without delay, to significantly improve the chances of any harm coming to children being minimised. I listed those measures in my opening response on this clause. As the law stands, quite frankly, any suggestion that reasonable punishment could be used as a defence to serious harm to a child, or indeed death, as has been asserted, is completely wrong and frankly absurd.

[Ellie Chowns]

The Minister cited an example from Ireland. I do not think anybody is arguing that abolition of the defence of reasonable punishment will, in and of itself, stop all violence against children, but we are arguing that it is an important component of what must be done to stop violence against children. The Children’s Commissioner and all the other people I have cited have made very powerful arguments to that effect. Professionals working in the sector have talked about how the ambiguity of the current law is actively unhelpful to them in offering support and intervention to families in which this might be an issue.

Going back to the point about needing to wait for an impact assessment, does the Minister think there is any universe in which it could be more beneficial for children to keep the defence of reasonable punishment than it would be to abolish it? Surely it is logical to expect that ensuring equal protection for children will move things in a better direction, alongside all the family support required to make a sustainable long-term change.

[Catherine McKinnell]

As I have said, we need to wait and look at the evidence before making such a significant legislative change. The protection of children is critical. The Bill takes significant steps to improve safeguarding. The context in England is different from Scotland and Wales. Therefore, the changes would need to be considered very carefully in the light of the evidence and how they would tangibly impact the protection of children in England. We are awaiting the impact assessment and will take action accordingly.

Abusive parents are caught under the existing legislative framework. The challenge in this area is that parenting is complex. I can attest that it is one of the most difficult jobs anyone can do. Parents know their children, and they want to get it right with their children. As the hon. Member for North Herefordshire acknowledges, parenting programmes and support is what we are focused on. We are putting in place support for parents to be good parents, because that is what the vast majority want to be. When that is not their intent, there are laws in place to prevent harm from coming to children. I absolutely accept the arguments being put forward today. We have an open mind and will look at the evidence and take a very careful approach to this. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 56 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 57 and 58 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 59

Commencement

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I rise to speak to the new clause, tabled in my name and in the name of a number of my colleagues. Briefly, it goes without saying that, on all sides of the House, we are horrified by child sex abuse and what Professor Alexis Jay uncovered through her seven-year-long investigation. We are also horrified that so little progress has been made to date in implementing the 20 recommendations she set out. The new clause therefore seeks to create a legislative commitment, with clear timescales and regular reporting to Parliament, on progress in implementing that report. It is an attempt to approach the issue constructively.

I was disappointed, to put it mildly—in fact, pretty outraged—that Conservative colleagues sought to weaponise the issue on Second Reading to try to kill off the entire Bill. I hope that this is a much more constructive approach. However, I recognise that shortly after my tabling the new clause following Second Reading, the Government made further announcements, including that Baroness Casey will undertake a rapid review and that they will be setting out a timetable.

On that basis, I am happy to withdraw the new clause, but my party and I will continue to hold the Government’s feet to the fire. These girls have been abused, and I am in no doubt that the abuse is ongoing. That needs to be tackled, and justice needs to be served, so I hope that the Government will implement the recommendations and set out a clear timescale.

[Ellie Chowns]

I rise to speak in support of the new clause, while recognising what the hon. Lady who tabled it has just said. In doing so, I am particularly mindful of a constituent of mine who came to see me in January to tell me that she had given evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Frustrated does not even cover how she felt—she was incredibly upset at the lack of progress on implementation under the previous Government, and she was frustrated to find that progress now is still not fast enough.

We have a huge responsibility to all who suffer child sexual abuse, and in particular to those who have been brave enough to come forward and give evidence, trusting that that evidence would help to make changes. I hope that the Minister can clarify timetables for implementation.

[Catherine McKinnell]

As the Prime Minister has made clear, we are absolutely focused on delivering justice and change for the victims on this horrific crime. On 6 January, the Home Secretary outlined in Parliament commitments to introduce a mandatory duty for those engaging with children to report sexual abuse and exploitation, to toughen up sentencing by making grooming an aggravating factor and to introduce a new performance framework for policing.

On 16 January, the Home Secretary made a further statement to the House that, before Easter, the Government will lay out a clear timetable for taking forward the 20 recommendations from the final IICSA report. Four of those were for the Home Office, including on disclosure and barring, and work on those is already under way. As the Home Secretary stated, a cross-Government ministerial group is considering and working through the remaining recommendations. That group will be supported by a new victims and survivors panel.

The Government will also implement all the remaining recommendations in IICSA’s separate, stand-alone report on grooming gangs, from February 2022. As part of that, we will update Department for Education guidance. Other measures that the Government are taking forward include the appointment of Baroness Louise Casey to lead a rapid audit of existing evidence on grooming gangs, which will support a better understanding of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country, and to make recommendations on the further work that is needed.

The Government will extend the remit of the independent child sexual abuse review panel, so that it covers not just historical cases before 2013, but all cases since, so that any victim of abuse will have the right to seek an independent review without having to go back to the local institutions that decided not to proceed with their case. We will also provide stronger national backing for local inquiries, by supplying £5 million of funding to help local authorities set up their own reviews. Working in partnership with Tom Crowther KC, the Home Office will develop a new effective framework for victim-centred, locally led inquiries.

This landmark Bill will put in place a package of support to drive high and rising standards throughout our education and care systems, so that every child can achieve and thrive. It will protect children at risk of abuse and stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks in service. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Twickenham is content to withdraw her new clause, and thank her for that. Allowing this Bill’s passage will indeed go a long way to supporting the young people growing up in our system and to protect them from falling through the cracks that may leave them vulnerable to this form of abuse. Indeed, across Government, we will continue to work to take forward the recommendations and to reform our system so that victims get the justice they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

New clause 2 would extend the provision of free school lunches to all primary school children, from year 2 up to year 6. It was tabled in the in the name of the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher)—I thank him for his work on this—and has been supported by 43 hon. Members across the House. In addition to this high level of support from MPs, the No Child Left Behind campaign, which underpins new clause 2, is backed by more than 250 civil society leaders, from unions to charities, from medical bodies to faith leaders, and from mayors to councils. This widespread backing is unsurprising, because the case for universal free school meals is, in fact, overwhelming.

Let us start with the need, which is acute. I am sure colleagues remember how during the pandemic Marcus Rashford ignited the campaign for free school meals, pointing out that we could fill 27 Wembley stadiums with the 2.5 million children who were struggling to know where their next meal was coming from—a shocking indictment.

That shameful legacy of child poverty from the last Government continues, with hunger in schools still endemic. University of Bristol research shows that one in five schools runs a food bank. That figure, I am told, is higher than the total number of community food banks being operated outside schools by organisations such as the Trussell Trust and the Independent Food Aid Network.

The National Education Union explained that its members see the struggles of children in poverty every day. Some 80% of teachers asked said that they had provided food for hungry children out of their own pockets—is that not extraordinary? One of those teachers said:

“So many of our children arrive tired and hungry. I find the issue with food so awful. I stock my school kitchen every week with fruit, cereal, milk, biscuits...the number of children who pop in to see me and then ask for food has grown over the last two years. It is heart-breaking.”

It truly is.

New clause 2 is therefore a probing amendment to make the case for a universal approach as the best policy response for three key reasons. First, it is immediately good for children. Secondly, it is an effective long-term investment. Thirdly, it is basically just efficient. I will briefly explore those arguments.

Universal provision is good for children; it immediately helps children to learn, grow and thrive in school. For example, we have recently had the roll-out of free school meal provision to all children attending primary state schools in London. Initial research evaluating that roll-out, which was published a couple of months ago, found that the policy helped with children’s readiness to learn and ability to concentrate. It helps children to do what they are supposed to be doing in schools—learning.

The Department for Education evaluation of the pilot undertaken by the last Labour Government found that pupils in schools where all children received free school meals made four to eight weeks’ more progress in maths and English over two years. That is an extraordinary improvement in progress. In that pilot, the poorest children were those who made the most progress, reducing the attainment gap. In areas with means-tested provision, the effect on attainment was negligible, so we have strong evidence for the benefits of universality.

On the health benefits—this is really shocking—research by The BMJ found that less than 2% of packed lunches met the school food standards. That represents an extraordinary nutritional shortfall in what many children are eating. A policy of universal free school meals would be a major opportunity to increase healthy eating. Ensuring that every child in a school has access to the same food also helps to reduce the stigma and shame that comes from singling out pupils through means-tested provision, and gives pupils a better sense of belonging in school.

Those are the immediate benefits of universal provision, but there are also really strong long-term investment benefits from it. The evidence shows that these universal systems reduce inequality and deliver wider economic prosperity beyond the classroom. PwC—that well-known radical institution—produced an analysis showing that, for every £1 invested in universal free school meals, £1.71 is generated in core benefits, such as increased savings for the NHS and for schools, and increased lifetime earnings and tax contributions. Other expert research also shows that the provision of universal free school meals increases pupils’ lifetime earnings, with the biggest increase again for the most disadvantaged children, thereby reducing inequalities for a generation after school. It is such a powerful policy for reducing inequalities.

I have banged on in other Commons debates about the value of public procurement for investing in our wider UK food and farming sector. When food is sustainably sourced, there is a huge potential benefit; work from Food for Life demonstrates that every £1 spent creates £3 in social, economic and environmental value, mostly in the form of jobs in the local economy.

The third key argument for universal free school meal provision is simply that it is more efficient. We know that providing free school meals helps to end a situation where children fall through the gaps. Means-testing is always going to miss some children and families and, in England, the genuinely draconian eligibility criteria for free school meals means that one in three children living in poverty are still considered too well-off to access free school meals. That is extraordinary. Restricted eligibility, complicated registration processes and stigma also block countless families from accessing support. A universal provision would end this situation where far too many children fall through the gaps.

Free school meals, by the way, would also be massively more efficient in reducing administration. Schools would be able to get back administration time with all children’s meals being provided in the same way at the same time, as one mechanism, and we would get rid of problems around school lunch debts. These universal policies are also easier to defend and protect from erosion by future Governments, who might seek to freeze thresholds or restrict eligibility. In the UK, Wales and London are leading the way in the provision of free, universal, healthy meals at lunch time for every child in primary school as a means of reducing inequalities. England needs to catch up.

I sincerely hope that the Minister will consider new clause 2 ahead of Report to build on the excellent progress on breakfast clubs included in the Bill. Would it not be even more efficient and beneficial—nutritionally and economically, and for all the other reasons I have outlined—to ensure universal free school meal provision when children are already in school? It certainly would be at primary level, which is the case made by this amendment.

I and my party support a policy of extension of universal free school meals to all children, because hunger does not stop at age 11. This amendment focuses particularly on primary school-age children. We know children cannot learn effectively when they are hungry and school dinners help children to focus. They bring the community together and help children to connect with their peers and to build bright futures. Our children learn and play together—they should eat together, too.

[Munira Wilson]

Briefly, I very much support the ambition in this new clause. After all, it was the Liberal Democrats, in Government, who introduced universal infant free school meals; we have always had the long-term ambition of extending that to all primary school children. However, I recognise the cash-constrained environment that the Government are operating in. That is why, when we get to it, I will be speaking to new clause 31, which looks at increasing the eligibility for children to receive free school meals. However, I want to put on the record that we do support the intent of this provision in the long term, for all the reasons the hon. Lady has just laid out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan]

I am referring to a persistently high disadvantage gap. I will point out that this Government take child poverty extremely seriously. It is a stain on our society. That is why I am so proud that this new Labour Government have introduced a child poverty taskforce led jointly by the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We will end child poverty. It is a stain on our society, and we are committed to making sure that we do everything we can and are publishing a strategy in due course.

With regard to transitional protections, I say to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire that my Department recognises the vital role played by free school meals and encourages all eligible families that need support to take up that entitlement. To make it as easy as possible to receive free school meals, we provide an eligibility checking service. On transitional protections specifically, we will provide clarity to schools on protections ahead of the current March 2025 end date.

The new ministerial taskforce has been set up to develop a child poverty strategy, which will be published in spring 2025. The taskforce will consider a range of policies, including the provision of free school meals, in assessing what will have the biggest impact on driving down rates of child poverty.

I appreciate the continued engagement of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud on the issue of expanding free school meal provision to more pupils and on school food more broadly. He has raised concerns about obesity in particular and will be aware that the school food standards, which other Members have mentioned, apply to all food and drink served on school premises and, crucially, restrict foods high in fat, salt and sugar.

We are taking important measures through the Bill to ensure that the standards apply consistently across all state-funded schools. We are also clear that breakfast clubs are in scope of the standards. We recognise how important this issue is and want to ensure that free school meals are being delivered to the families that most need them. However, given the funding involved, that must be considered through the child poverty taskforce and the multi-year spending review. We remain committed to ensuring that school food is prioritised within Government. That is most clearly demonstrated through our breakfast clubs manifesto commitment, aimed at state-funded primary school pupils, which we are working hard to deliver.

[Ellie Chowns]

I welcome what I believe I heard: that the Minister maintains a relatively open mind on this question and will continue to look into it. He said that the effectiveness of the free school meal policy would be evaluated in the light of whether it was an effective mechanism for tackling child poverty. I want to re-emphasise that my arguments are not just about impact on child poverty. In considering expansion of free school meals, will he evaluate their effectiveness in terms of the full range of their potential benefits—not just the impact on child poverty, but health benefits, wider economic benefits and so on?

[Stephen Morgan]

As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach under review and learn from what the evidence and data tell us. I can assure the hon. Lady that I met with a number of stakeholders, including the London Mayor, to understand the impact that the roll-out in London is having on not only household incomes, but children’s outcomes.

The hon. Member for North Herefordshire asked about specific points on the school food standards. It is important that children eat nutritious food at school. The school food standards define which foods and drinks must be provided and which are restricted. They apply to food and drink provided to pupils on school premises and during the extended school day up to 6 pm. As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach to school food under continued review.

The hon. Member for North Herefordshire asked about the sustainable sourcing of food. This Government’s ambition is to source half of all food served in public sector settings from local producers or from growers certified to meet higher environmental standards where possible. We have committed to supporting schools to drive up their sustainable practices on food. Schools can voluntarily follow the Government’s buying standards, which include advice around sustainable sourcing. We mentioned earlier the Mayor of London’s roll-out of universal free school meals, and we are looking closely at evaluations and new evidence emerging from the scheme, including Impact on Urban Health’s recent evaluation. I have met with those stakeholders and heard of their experience of participating in the programme.

Finally, on whether the free school meals offer is more generous from devolved Administrations than in England, education, including free school meals policy, is a devolved matter. In England, we spend over £1.5 billion annually delivering free school meals to almost 3.5 million pupils across primary, secondary and further education phases. As with all Government programmes, we keep eligibility and funding for free school meals under review.

[Ellie Chowns]

I thank the Minister for his response. As I said at the start, I tabled this as a probing amendment and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 3

Reporting of local authority performance regarding EHC plans

“In the Children and Families Act 2014, after section 40 insert—

“40A Reporting of local authority performance

(1) Local authorities must publish regular information relating to their fulfilment of duties relating to EHC needs assessments and EHC plans under this part.

(2) Such information must include—

(a) the authority’s performance against the requirements of this Act and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 relating to the timeliness with which action needs to be taken by the authority in relation to EHC needs assessments and EHC plans;

(b) explanations for any failures to meet relevant deadlines or timeframes;

(c) proposals for improving the authority’s performance.

(3) Information published under this section must be published—

(a) on a monthly basis;

(b) on the local authority’s website; and

(c) in a form which is easily accessible and understandable.”” —(Ian Sollom.)

This new clause would require local authorities to publish their performance against the statutory deadlines in the EHCP process.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

New clause 5, in the name of the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), is a probing new clause, and I sincerely hope it will generate debate and action. Its purpose is to make the holiday activities and food programme statutory provision. Following Marcus Rashford’s high-profile campaign, the HAF programme was rolled out across England to provide children with nutritious food, childcare and activities in the holidays. One of its aims is to ensure children receive healthy and nutritious meals during the school holidays.

Nutrition is a key concern. Recent reports show an increase in hospital admissions for nutrient deficiencies, and that data should really ring alarm bells. The longevity of the cost of living crisis—it has been with us for years now—means that food insecurity has become the norm for many families, who are unable to buy staple nutritious products. Stark health inequalities are highly prevalent, particularly when it comes to diet-related poor health. The most deprived communities are affected disproportionately by much higher rates of food-related ill health and disease, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and dental decay.

No doubt the Committee will be concerned by the food insecurity statistics collated by the Food Foundation, which show that 14% of UK households experience food insecurity, but inequalities mean that the number is much higher for certain groups. Among households with children, it is 18%. Among single-adult households with children, it is 31%. Among households of a non-white ethnicity, it is 26%—double the rate for white households. It is 32% for households with an adult limited a lot by disability, but 10% for households with non-disabled adults. Food insecurity and health inequalities go hand in hand.

In that already difficult context, school holidays are a known pressure point for families, which face extra food and childcare costs, and can have reduced incomes due to time of work to care for children. Evaluation of the HAF programme shows multiple benefits to families. In a qualitative review of HAF programme holiday clubs in Yorkshire, parents reported that children were eating more healthily and experiencing a wider variety of foods during those holiday programmes. Analysis of meals in five clubs in areas of high deprivation found that children eligible for free school meals who attended a club had better quality diets on days that they attended the club than on days that they did not attend.

HAF clubs provide free childcare to working families and help to reduce the costs associated with the loss of free school meals, which are significant for families in the holidays. Of course, they help to reduce learning loss over the summer holidays by providing enriching activities and physical activity for children.

But HAF funding is currently committed on a short-term basis. Although the current funding has just been extended for a year, short-term extensions periodically leave local authorities unable to plan provision in the long term. As a former councillor, I have seen for myself that a hand-to-mouth approach to funding creates uncertainty for club providers and leaves children at risk of holiday hunger if funding is not renewed. That is why the holiday activities and food programme must be secured and put on a statutory footing, alongside other crucial parts of the nutritional safety net such as free school meals and the Healthy Start scheme. I sincerely urge the Government to take this important step. Although this is a probing new clause, I very much look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I turn to new clause 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), on the topic of providing healthy meals and activities to children in receipt of free school meals during school holidays. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire for speaking to the new clause. She makes an important point about how local authorities provide support to children who receive a free school meal during term time and during school holidays, and we fully support local authorities in continuing to provide this support through the existing holiday activities and food programme.

The highly regarded HAF programme is established in every local authority across England and is already delivering vital support to children and families across the country during school holidays. The programme’s grant conditions already place an obligation on local authorities to make free holiday club places available to children in their area who receive benefits-related free school meals, and to provide meals that meet our school foods standards and to deliver physical activities in line with the chief medical officer’s guidance. Our non-statutory programme guidance provides comprehensive support to local authorities and holiday clubs on how they might best provide this support.

However, HAF does not provide only meals and activities; it goes much further. HAF clubs work with children to teach them about the importance of healthy eating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Children and their families can learn how to cook nutritious and tasty low-cost meals, and clubs can act as a referral point for families to get information, help and access to other services and support when they need it. Our programme does not support just children who receive free school meals. We provide local authorities with the flexibility to use up to 15% of their total HAF budget to work with other children and families who they deem to be vulnerable or at risk, which might include looked-after children with an education, health and care plan, or children who are at risk of exploitation and need somewhere safe during the school holidays.

Flexibility has been key to delivering the HAF programme in thousands of holiday clubs across the country. Placing a legal duty on local authorities to deliver food and activities to free school meal recipients would risk stifling the innovation that local authorities have to deliver HAF in a way that is right for their communities, and to allow them to develop and evolve year to year, whether that is through working with schools to target children with low school attendance rates or working with police and community organisations to support children at risk of involvement in gang violence.

Since they began delivering this programme in 2021, local authorities have built partnerships with organisations across the community and we have seen some wonderful examples of collaboration. One of our 2023 regional champions, based not far from the constituency of the hon. Member for North Herefordshire, was the Venture Community Hub in Gloucestershire, which was recognised for the work that it did with schools, businesses and charitable organisations. The local authority was instrumental in supporting it to build, adapt and develop a HAF programme that met the needs of the diverse community around it.

I am delighted to confirm that this great programme will be continuing for 2025-26, backed by funding of more than £200 million. Future funding for the programme will be determined by the spending review. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire for highlighting this important issue and we look forward to carrying on our work with local authorities across the country to continue to provide vital support for children and families during the school holidays. I therefore recommend that the Committee does not press the new clause to a vote.

[Ellie Chowns]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 8

Identification of children eligible for free school meals

“After section 512ZA of the Education Act 1996 (power to charge for meals etc.) insert—

‘512ZAA Identification of children eligible for free school meals

(1) The Secretary of State must identify all children eligible for free school meals in England.

(2) A child’s eligibility for free school meals is not dependent on any application having been made for free school meals on their behalf.

(3) Where a child has been identified as eligible for free school meals, the Secretary of State must provide for this information to be shared with—

(a) the school at which the child is registered; and

(b) the relevant local education authority.

(4) Where a school has been informed that a child on its pupil roll is eligible for free school meals, the school must provide that child with a free school meal.

(5) A local education authority must provide the means for a parent or guardian of a child who has been identified as eligible for free school meals to opt out of the provision of a free school meal under subsection (4).’”—(Ellie Chowns.)

This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to proactively identify all children eligible for free school meals in England, making the application process for free school meals opt-out rather than opt-in.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Ellie Chowns]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 31—Eligibility for free school lunches—

“In section 512ZB of the Education Act 1996 (provision of free school lunches and milk), before paragraph (a) insert—

‘(za) C’s household income is less than £20,000 per year;’”

New clause 67—Registration of children eligible for free school meals—

“After section 512ZA of the Education Act 1996 (power to charge for meals etc.) insert—

‘512ZAA Registration of children eligible for free school meals

(1) The Secretary of State must ensure that all children in England who are eligible to receive free school meals are registered to receive free school meals.

(2) The Secretary of State may make provision for children to be registered for free school meals upon their parents or guardians demonstrating the child’s eligibility through an application for relevant benefits.’”

[Ellie Chowns]

New clause 8 is another important probing amendment, tabled by the hon. Member for Stroud, that places a duty on the Secretary of State to proactively identify all children eligible for free school meals in England, making the application process for free school meals opt out, rather than opt in. I note that the Minister, in his comments on new clause 5, mentioned that making things statutory made it terribly restrictive. On that basis, why would one ever make anything statutory?

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

School uniform guidance?

[Ellie Chowns]

This new clause seeks to address the very real problem that up to 250,000 children, or approximately 11% of those eligible for free school meals, even under the currently very restrictive eligibility criteria, miss out on them because it is an opt-in process. It is simply not okay that so many eligible children are missing out on free school meals. That is in addition to the roughly 900,000 children who are living in poverty, but still not qualifying for free school meals because the eligibility criteria are so tight. I believe that we may be coming on to discuss that a little later.

Early findings from areas with which the Fix Our Food research programme are working show that children from non-white communities, or lone-parent households, are more likely to not be registered for free school meals despite being eligible. Again, inequalities are reproducing themselves when it comes to people accessing their statutory rights. Charities working to address this totally unacceptable situation point to several reasons for the under-registration rate: parents may struggle to fill out complex forms; there may be language barriers for parents; there may be a lack of awareness of free school eligibility; and there may be stigma or embarrassment. The current system is regularly described by schools and local authorities as “cumbersome” and “financially and administratively inefficient”. Receiving statutory benefits should be easy and straightforward for people who are eligible.

There are obvious benefits to the child from getting a nutritious, filling lunch, which we have discussed already today and also on our last sitting day, including reduced food insecurity, improved nutrition and health, and increased attainment and lifetime earning potential, as I set out when I spoke to new clause 2. There are also important wider benefits to the child. Struggling families also miss out on other benefits that free school meal registration would give them access to, including the holiday activities and food programme and uniform grants.

There are also benefits to schools. If children are not registered for free school meals, schools miss out on much-needed pupil premium funding, worth £1,455 per pupil. There are also benefits to local authorities. The Fix Our Food research programme is supporting 66 local authorities to implement an opt-out, or right-to-object approach to free school meal registration. It is identifying and writing to families using existing datasets to inform them that their children will be automatically registered unless they opt out.

As I understand it, in many cases, this has resulted in children, who were previously missing out, becoming successfully registered, and opt-out rates are extremely low. However, only a few councils have successfully adopted this new process. In some cases, despite local authorities’ efforts, data sharing barriers have not been possible to overcome. Some have even been threatened with legal action. The local work still does not capture all eligible children, with families falling through the gaps, as access to datasets is patchy. Further, my understanding is that this process is resource-intensive. Again, it is administratively intensive, incurring onerous governance and administration at council and school level.

Meanwhile, the Greater London Authority has put resource into auto-enrolment. Although that is positive for children in London, the same level of support is not available for most children in the rest of England.

Free school meal auto-enrolment would register eligible families to receive free school meals using benefits data, unless families decide to opt out. This requires data sharing between the Department for Work and Pensions, which holds the data that identifies which children should be eligible for these schemes, and the Department for Education, which administers the scheme. I really hope that, as part of this important Bill,the Government will seriously consider how they can introduce auto-enrolment for free school meals to ensure that all those who are eligible are in receipt of their entitlement. This is a fantastic opportunity to do so now.

As a statutory scheme, funding for the meals for these children should already be available. There is just an administrative barrier that stops far too many children getting what they are entitled to. In the meantime, until this is established, I hope the Government will instigate collaborative working across local government so that we can agree to make progress on this issue.

In conclusion, I want to underscore the fact that we should see this as a first step towards expanding eligibility for free school meals to more children to ensure that no child misses out on a nutritious hot meal at school every day.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Christopher, on our final day in Committee. I rise to speak to new clauses 31 and 67 on free school meals. New clause 67 largely mirrors the provisions of new clause 8, which the hon. Member for North Herefordshire has just spoken to. I will address the issue of auto-enrolment in a moment.

New clause 31 seeks to expand the eligibility threshold for free school meals to children from households earning less than £20,000 per year, ensuring that no child living in poverty goes hungry at school. The Child Poverty Action Group currently estimates that some 900,000 children living in poverty are missing out on a free school meal, because free school meal eligibility in England is linked to specific benefits, with a household income threshold of just £7,400 per year, after tax, excluding benefits. That leaves many struggling families without support.

The threshold was last uprated in 2018. We know the huge cost of living crisis that households have had to deal with since then. For those on low incomes, that has often meant the difference between heating and eating, and children turning up to school with empty lunchboxes. I saw a mother at my surgery last year who was having to skip her mental health medication to use the prescription money she saved to pay for lunch for her daughter, who is now at college.

[Ellie Chowns]

The hon. Member makes an absolutely excellent point, not just about the excruciatingly low threshold for eligibility of free school meals, but about the fact that these thresholds, when set in law, get stuck at the numbers. Does she agree that thresholds should be set at, for example, a percentage of average household income, or a similar threshold that moves over time, so that we do not end up with children’s eligibility being squeezed and squeezed year on year as incomes rise but the threshold does not?

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

I will press both new clauses 31 and 67 to a vote later.

[Ellie Chowns]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 9

Requirement to provide information about bereavement services

“(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations establish a protocol for the collection and dissemination of information relating to bereavement support services for children and young people.

(2) A protocol made under subsection (1) must—

(a) define the bereavement support services to which the protocol applies, which must include services provided by—

(i) local authorities;

(ii) NHS bodies; and

(iii) charities and other third sector organisations;

(b) place a duty on the Secretary of State to publish information, including online, about services to which the protocol applies;

(c) place a duty on specified public bodies and other persons to provide information to children and young people about services to which the protocol applies, including—

(i) specialist services for children and young people;

(ii) services provided online; and

(iii) accessible services for deaf and disabled children and young people;

(d) where a duty under paragraph (c) applies, require the identification of children or young people who may require a service to which the protocol applies.

(3) The Secretary of State must make regulations under this section by statutory instrument.

(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.

(5) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a draft statutory instrument containing regulations under this section within 12 months of the passing of this Act.”—(Ian Sollom.)

This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to establish a protocol for the collection and dissemination of information about bereavement support services to children and young people.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Ian Sollom]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am moving this new clause on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine). According to the Childhood Bereavement Network, around one in 29 school-aged children—about one per classroom—has been bereaved of a parent or sibling. Many more will lose grandparents, and sadly some will have lost their friends. Each year, data is collected on the number of adults bereaved of their husband, wife or child, and until recently data was collected on the number of children affected by the divorce of their parents. However, no similar data is collected on the number who face the devastating loss of their mum or dad or someone else really important in their life.

All that means that when a child is bereaved, there is no obvious way of letting them know what support is available to them, despite a diverse range of services offered by organisations across the country, including Winston’s Wish, Child Bereavement UK and the Childhood Bereavement Network, which all offer online and group sessions with trained professionals and peer-to-peer services for young people to share their experience with each other. Those services are really important in engaging those young people going through quite a diverse range of circumstances, many of which will need quite bespoke support, whether that is specifically around children with disabilities or additional needs, children who might be in a rural community where they are more isolated, or simply the difference between losing someone suddenly versus through a long-term illness.

We know that schools do very good work in supporting vulnerable young people through bereavement, but it is not consistent in every school. Many young people will need help at times when school is not available, such as in the holidays and in the evenings, and they may just feel embarrassed about asking people at school. New clause 9 would finally put in a simple protocol to ensure that every child who is bereaved knows that support is out there if they would like to access it. This is a relatively low-cost, low-effort task that would help those charities to connect with grieving families and young people and provide that support to children to help them to process those difficult, traumatic experiences and, in turn, try to prevent the long-term negative impacts that can arise from bereavement.

[Ellie Chowns]

I rise to speak to new clause 52 on bereavement policy in schools, which is closely related to new clause 9.

The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire has already alluded to the fact that no official data is collected on the number of children and young people who are bereaved of someone important in their lives. In the absence of annual statistics, the Childhood Bereavement Network has estimated that over 46,000 children and young people are bereaved of a parent each year in the UK. That is a huge number—around 127 each day. Data from representative samples suggest that about one in 29 children and young people in school today—roughly one per classroom—has been bereaved of a parent or sibling at some point in their childhood. Some 70% of primary schools have at least one recently bereaved pupil on roll. That means that all schools are likely to be touched by bereavement, and those ripples of grief can be felt across the whole school community.

When somebody in the family is terminally ill or has died, just getting to school, concentrating, getting on with peers and managing emotions can be hugely challenging, and can have major consequences for attendance and achievement in the long term. Parentally bereaved young people’s GCSE scores are an average of half a grade lower than their non-bereaved peers; in one study, girls bereaved of a sibling scored almost a full grade below their matched controls. Bereavement also has long-term effects further in life. The death of a parent by age 16 is associated with women failing to gain any sort of qualification, and both men and women being unemployed at the age of 30.

Schools clearly have a huge role to play in supporting children facing such tragic circumstances. Two years ago, the independent UK Commission on Bereavement surveyed children, young people and adults about their experiences of bereavement. It found some examples of fantastic practice and support in schools, but it was far from universal. Just under half of the bereaved children, young people and adults who shared their experiences said that they got little or no support from their education setting after their bereavement. That is such a tragic missed opportunity.

Many children and young people shared the loneliness, isolation, and lack of acknowledgment and support that they had faced. For example, a young teenager said:

“I knew my teachers all knew, but no-one spoke to me about the fact they knew, so it felt like an unspoken secret.”

A primary-aged child said:

“I felt like I was the only one whose daddy had died.”

Another teenager said:

“Everyone sees it as me just misbehaving. Maybe if teachers and any other adults involved were trained to see the signs I wouldn’t of been left for the last 18 months with no support.”

These young people are crying out for support from their schools and from us.

To address the challenges, the commission recommended that all education establishments should be required to have a bereavement policy, including staff training and a process for supporting bereaved children and their families. In line with wider evidence from parents, teachers, and children and young people themselves supporting the inclusion of grief education in the curriculum, the commission also recommended that students should have opportunities to learn about coping with grief as a life skill.

New clause 52 would directly address the inconsistencies in support that grieving children and young people face, and it would help schools to get on the front foot. At the moment, they often reach out for support in crisis mode when a pupil is facing bereavement or has been recently bereaved. They make contact with local child bereavement services, scrambling for guidance on how to respond, how to tell the rest of the school community, and how to make a plan to support grieving pupils coming back to school. All too often, they wish they had done that work in advance of the crisis. The new clause would help schools to be wise before the event, to respond calmly and consistently, and to help children and young people stay on course as they navigate this most challenging of events in their life.

I have tabled this as a probing amendment; I am interested to hear the Minister’s response. I hope that the Government will consider taking this opportunity to write into legislation the requirement for schools to provide support, consistently across the country, to the children and young people who desperately need it, to ensure that bereavement is addressed by every school to improve the life chances of children facing these most difficult circumstances.

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[Ian Sollom]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 13

Foster carers’ delegated authority for children in their care

“(1) Where a child (‘C’) who is looked after by the local authority is placed with a foster parent (‘F’) by a local authority, F may make decisions on C’s behalf in relation to the matters set out in subsection (2) where C’s placement plan does not specify an alternative decision maker.

(2) The matters referred to in subsection (1) are—

(a) medical and dental treatment,

(b) education,

(c) leisure and home life,

(d) faith and religious observance,

(e) use of social media,

(f) personal care, and

(g) any other matters which F considers appropriate.” —(Ellie Chowns.)

This new clause would enable foster carers to make day-to-day decisions on behalf of the children and young people they foster.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Ellie Chowns]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I am pleased to speak to new clause 13, which proposes that the Bill should provide a default delegated authority for foster carers to make day-to-day decisions for the children and young people in their care, which I think is quite straightforward.

Foster carers should have delegated authority to make these everyday decisions for children in their care—for example, about day-to-day activities such as school trips, holidays and sleepovers; about important appointments for their health and wellbeing or medical appointments; or indeed about haircuts, which is an issue that has been raised regularly by young people in care and their foster carers.

The guidance around delegated authority has not been strengthened since 2013. As a result, practice varies across fostering services, and foster carers are often unclear about which decisions they can take and which decisions they have to get permission for from elsewhere. Many foster carers report experiencing a lack of communication, clarity and information from social workers, with unnecessary paperwork and box ticking, and complicated processes.

In the Fostering Network’s 2024 state of the nations survey, less than a third of foster carers said children’s social workers are always clear about which decisions they have the authority to make in relation to the children they foster. That lack of clarity is clearly a huge issue for a large majority of foster carers. Only half of foster carers said that social workers are able to respond to requests for decisions in a timely manner; we all know social workers are under huge pressure. Foster carers reported that the most difficult decisions to make were around social opportunities, followed by healthcare, relationships and childhood experiences.

This new clause would set out in legislation that foster carers have default delegated authority on key everyday decisions where the child’s placement plan does not specify an alternative decision maker—and the placement plan can always specify that alternative. That default delegated authority would include decisions in day-to-day parenting, such as healthcare and leisure activities, and it would exclude routine but longer-term decisions such as school choice and significant events, such as surgery. It would provide more clarity, speed up decision making within foster families and for social workers, and provide foster carers with the confidence and autonomy that they need to make day-to-day decisions for the children who are in their care.

I urge the Government to take on board these points, and the content of this new clause, to make it easier for foster carers to make those decisions for children who, after all, they know best as they are caring for them. The new clause would ensure that children and young people do not miss out on the opportunities that they need to live a happy and healthy childhood.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate the hon. Member’s concern for foster carers having delegated authority on day-to-day decisions for the children in their care. Foster carers offer crucial support to some of the most vulnerable children in our society. They provide love, stability and compassion to children and young people when they need it most.

All foster carers should have delegated authority in relation to day-to-day parenting of the child in their care, such as routine decisions about health, hygiene, education and leisure activities, and where that is not appropriate, the child’s placement plan should set out reasons for that. That is so that the foster carers can support the child in having a normal upbringing, full of the experiences and opportunities that any other child would have. For all decisions relating to the foster child, the foster carer has delegated authority only if it is recorded in the child’s placement plan. That means that if something is not listed on the placement plan, the foster carer does not have that delegated authority and they have to check with their social worker before any decision can be made.

Foster carers can take decisions in relation to the child in their care only in line with the child’s agreed placement plan and the law governing parental responsibility. New clause 13 would mean that foster carers would, by default, have delegated authority on day-to-day issues, except where an alternative decision maker is listed on the child’s placement plan.

The change outlined in the new clause does not require a change to primary legislation. Delegated authority is outlined in secondary legislation in the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. We have begun conversations with foster carers and foster care providers about a proposed change, ensuring that all foster carers have delegated authority by default in relation to day-to-day parenting of the child in their care. We believe that reform to this policy area would benefit from a period of consultation with stakeholders to ensure that any change to delegated authority best reflects the interests of all parties.

Following consultation, we are committed to implementing the necessary amendments to secondary legislation. I hope that in the light of that, the hon. Member will feel able to withdraw the clause.

[Ellie Chowns]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 15

National statutory inquiry into grooming gangs

“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, set up a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs.

(2) An inquiry established under subsection (1) must seek to—

(a) identify common patterns of behaviour and offending between grooming gangs;

(b) identify the type, extent and volume of crimes committed by grooming gangs;

(c) identify the number of victims of crimes committed by grooming gangs;

(d) identify the ethnicity of members of grooming gangs;

(e) identify any failings, by action, omission or deliberate suppression, by—

(i) police,

(ii) local authorities,

(iii) prosecutors,

(iv) charities,

(v) political parties,

(vi) local and national government,

(vii) healthcare providers and health services, or

(viii) other agencies or bodies, in the committal of crimes by grooming gangs, including by considering whether the ethnicity of the perpetrators of such crimes affected the response by such agencies or bodies;

(f) identify such national safeguarding actions as may be required to minimise the risk of further such offending occurring in future;

(g) identify good practice in protecting children.

(3) The inquiry may do anything it considers is calculated to facilitate, or is incidental or conducive to, the carrying out of its functions and the achievement of the requirements of subsection (2).

(4) An inquiry established under this section must publish a report within two years of the launch of the inquiry.

(5) For the purposes of this section—

‘gang’ means a group of at least three adult males whose purpose or intention is to commit a sexual offence against the same victim or group of victims;

‘grooming’ means—

(a) activity carried out with the primary intention of committing sexual offences against the victim;

(b) activity that is carried out, or predominantly carried out, in person;

(c) activity that includes the provision of illicit substances and/or alcohol either as part of the grooming or concurrent with the commission of the sexual offence.”—(Neil O'Brien.)

This new clause would set up a national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs.

Brought up, and read the First time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes]

I could not agree more, and my hon. Friend helps me make a point that I had forgotten. You urged me to exercise control, Sir Christopher, but as you and other Members can see, I feel deeply about this topic. I feel very strongly about the importance of standing alongside survivors, and I am prepared to work with anybody in this House, of any party or none, to enhance the support that survivors receive. But having sat with survivors, I am not prepared to allow people to play politics with their experience, and for those individuals then to feign disappointment, hurt and abuse. This is not about how Members of this House feel about the honesty and truth of the words I am speaking; it is about the importance of survivors out in our communities, who have been let down for 14 years, who have suffered exploitative, abusive practices, and who will be looking to this House today to do the right thing by them. I call on the Conservatives in this Committee and across the House to do the right thing, stop playing politics, actually read the report if they have not done so already, and as a consequence show some dignity.

[Ellie Chowns]

Shortly after Christmas, a person came to see me who had given evidence to the IICSA inquiry and who was deeply upset by their perception that their experience, and the experience of others like them, was being used as a political football. They were outraged to find that the conclusions and recommendations of the inquiry had not yet been implemented. In this room, my role is to represent them. Their call is not for another public inquiry but for the implementation of the recommendations of the inquiry that has already been done.

I find it really disappointing that such serious matters are being used as a political football. The hon. Member for Bournemouth East made a valid point about the degree to which these issues were not addressed until very recently. I ask rhetorically: would this new clause even have been tabled were it not for pot-stirring tweets by Elon Musk? I very much doubt it. I therefore think this Committee should do the job we are here to do. We should scrutinise this Bill and not use it as an opportunity to play games with the lives of victims and survivors.

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East for his incredible experience and work in this area. I rise to speak about new clause 15, and I hope I can be of service to the Committee, having spent the past seven years of my work as a barrister serving on a public inquiry. I went straight from that to representing a constituency in Derby, the city that was the subject of the first local inquiry into grooming gangs in 2010. Those crimes are despicable and must be rooted out in Derby and elsewhere. Without the bravery of the girls in Derby, those crimes would not have been punished.

I am committed to supporting the considerable action that the Government are taking to ensure that others are punished, and victims and survivors protected and supported. I am really proud to sit on this Bill Committee, which will give the next generation of children and young people in Derby better protection and life chances. The Education Secretary rightly described this as the “single biggest piece” of children’s safeguarding legislation in a generation. I will seek to set out why new clause 15 does nothing to contribute to that aim.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Munira Wilson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Betts. New clause 30 is a simple clause that would put into statute the duty on every local authority to publish the details of their available preventive care and family support, because we know that those are crucial forms of early intervention for children who may be at risk of going into care or where families are struggling. They can prevent things getting to crisis point for families and children.

We know that a huge amount of good work is going on in local authorities up and down the country. Spending on preventive care is falling, while late intervention spend is rising, so it would be good practice for all local authorities to make that information freely and easily accessible to all families in the way that we have already legislated for, for instance, with the kinship care offer. I hope Ministers will seriously consider this simple new clause.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I rise to speak in particular to new clause 72, which is on a similar topic to new clause 30, although arguably is not quite as simply drafted. The number of children in care is at an all-time high, and outcomes for those children remain poor. Evidence from the children’s charity Action for Children shows that children who have any interaction with social care are twice as likely to fail an English or maths GCSE than their peers. We need to change those outcomes, preferably through early intervention.

We have spent much time in Committee discussing the Bill’s provisions on improving care for children who need to live with a foster family or in a residential home. It is important that the best possible support is available for those children who, for whatever reason, cannot live with their birth families. However, to significantly improve children’s social care, we need to radically reset the system with a much greater focus on helping families earlier on.

I welcome the Ministers’ comments in our previous debates that the Government are committed to helping children growing up in our country to get the best start in life through wider investment in family hubs and parenting support. However, as drafted, the Bill does little to do this. Only one section of the Bill, which covers family group decision making, and which we discussed right at the start, directly addresses the need for more early intervention. Unless we amend the Bill to go further, we will continue to have a system heavily balanced towards working with families when they reach crisis point, rather than one that seeks to prevent problems before they start.

As we have discussed, families in England face mounting pressures from the lingering effects of covid-19, the high cost of living and economic uncertainty. At the same time, there have been significant cuts to services to support families. I find this statistic shocking: between 2010-11 and 2022-23, spending on early help, such as family homes and children’s centres, decreased by 44%, while spending on late intervention, including children in care, increased by 57%. The skew is going the wrong way, and it does not have to be this way.

Since the late 1990s, several initiatives have been aimed at providing support to families in their communities. That includes the Sure Start centres—first established in 1997, with more than 3,500 children’s centres having been developed by 2009—and the latest family hubs, which provide support to parents from pre-birth all the way through to 18. These centres provided welcome, non-stigmatising support for families. The services they offer and have offered are varied, but often include provisions such as stay-and-play sessions, speech and language support or benefit and employment advice for parents.

While welcomed by families themselves, too often such services are seen as a “nice to have” and subject to cuts when funding is short. It is perhaps not surprising that evidence suggests that around 1,000 such centres have shut since 2009, but we know that cutting early support for families is a false economy. It does not benefit children and families, who are too often left to struggle alone, and it does not save money in the long term. In fact, spending on early intervention programmes has repeatedly been shown to be cheaper than spending later. And this is not just about the finances; it is about the wellbeing of children and families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case for banning smartphones in schools, but does he agree that banning smartphones in schools will not, in and of itself, tackle the problems that he has articulated? A recently published study, the first proper nationwide study of its type, shows that banning smartphones in school does not generate any statistical differences in various outcomes, because there is no difference in the amount of time that children are spending on their devices. Although there are strong arguments for banning them in school—and I recognise that there is a strong call for that from parents, teachers and, indeed, many students—a much more holistic approach is needed to tackle the harms that he has outlined.

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Lady makes a thoughtful point. There is a fantastic meta-analysis published by the London School of Economics and the 5Rights Foundation of all the different studies that have been done on this around Europe. The hon. Lady referred to a specific study, which I hope to speak to the authors about. It is a good study, and perfectly sensible, but the issue is that it cannot find anything statistically significant because it looked at only 30 schools, with a sample size of about 1,200 pupils. It does not look at any natural experiments either, so it does not look at schools that are changing their policies.

Where we have good RCT-like evidence, like in the great study in Spain, where they looked at a province that changed its policy wholesale, we can see from those natural experiments the really powerful effects of in-school policies. I agree with the hon. Lady that this is not the only thing that we should do. The study she mentioned was not wrong; it just could never show us the things that people are interested in. Indeed, there is plenty of other evidence out there in these meta-analyses, and from Jonathan Haidt’s website, of really powerful in-school effects.

A study in the US shows that a class time-only rule does not give teachers as much benefit as they might expect. Research from the National Education Association found that 73% of teachers in schools that allow phone use between classes find that phones are disruptive during classes. The same is true here. The Department for Education’s national behaviour survey, published in April 2024, found that 35% of secondary school teachers reported mobile phones being used during lessons without permission. The problem is more pronounced for older children, unsurprisingly. Some 46% of pupils in years 10 to 11 reported mobile phones being used when they should not have been during “most or all” lessons. That is nearly half of pupils in most or all lessons reporting disruption, so the problem is absolutely there in the DFE’s data.

The idea that guidance has done the trick and that there is no longer a problem to solve is contradicted by the Department’s evidence. Work by the company Teacher Tapp, also known as School Surveys, similarly finds very high levels of problems and no signs of progress. Instead of guidance, all schools should be mandated and funded to have lockers and pouches, and to get kids to put smartphones away for the whole day, including breaks. Schools should be the beachhead and the first place that we re-create a smartphone-free childhood—seven hours in which we de-normalise being on the phone all the time for young people.

Why do we need a full ban, and not just guidance? I already gave some of the data showing that the guidance has not worked, but there are two other reasons. First, we need to support schools and have their back. From speaking to teachers and school leaders, I know that the pressures from parents to allow phones can be really severe on schools. Some parents, unfortunately, can be unreasonably determined that they must be able to contact their child directly at any minute, even though they are perfectly safe in schools. In the sorts of places where three and four-year-olds have smartphones, that is, I am afraid, normalised now, so a national ban would make things simpler and take the heat off schools.

Secondly, a full and total ban is needed as part of a wider resetting of social norms, as the hon. Member for North Herefordshire said, about children and smartphones. Smartphones and social media are doing damage to education even when they are not being used in schools. Our new clause 48 aims to be proportionate, and subsection (2)(b) would allow for exceptions as appropriate, having learned the lessons of what has been done in other countries.

To come to the hon. Lady’s wider point, when I was a Health Minister, I wanted us to get going an equivalent of the famous five bits of fruit and veg a day for this field—other Members might remember “Don’t Die of Ignorance” or “Clunk Click Every Trip”. We need some big things to reset the culture and wake up a lot of people, who are not necessarily going to read Jonathan Haidt’s book, to dangers that they may be unaware of. The heavy exposure of our kids to addictive-by-design products of the tech industry is the smoking of our generation. As with smoking, the tech industry comes up with fake solutions that do not actually make things safe. In the 1950s, it was filters on cigarettes, and now it is the supposed parental filters on social media. Just like with smoking, there is unfortunately a powerful social gradient to unmonitored internet access, with the worst effects on the poorest.

I do not know what Ministers will do about our new clause this time round, and I do not know what they will do as the Bill goes through the other place, but I hope that they will end up implementing this idea at some point. I will take my hat off to them when they do.

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[Damian Hinds]

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says. I had my most recent constituency session with parents on the matter last Friday, and with some things, there is a bit of a grey area. Lots of parents say, “I don’t really mind so much about this”, but others do mind. With tracking technology, for example, some parents say that they really do not like being able to know where their child is. There is some variance, but the one imperative that is common to almost every parent is, “I want my child to be able to call me if they are in trouble, and I want to be able to call them on the way to and from school.” Parents want to hear from children if a club has been cancelled and they will be coming home at a different time, or if they are worried, or whatever it is. It is possible to do that on essentially any phone on the market, from the highest iPhone—I do not know what number they are up to these days—down to the most basic sub-Nokia brick phone.

There are other questions about functionality, and about what social media is. The Australians are having a bit of a debate about that at the moment, because to ban social media, they have to know what they are trying to ban. However, to address directly the point that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East made, much of this discussion relates to all manner of electronica that a child might have in their pocket or bag.

[Ellie Chowns]

Are we not getting a bit distracted? The new clause is about banning things from the start of the first lesson to the end of the last, not on the way to or from school when children might want to call their parents.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Lady is quite right. I was only going to speak about this for three minutes or so, but the hon. Gentleman tempted me into other areas. On the promise that he was making one last intervention, I indulged him, and I am grateful to him.

In an earlier intervention on the Minister for School Standards, I mentioned the NHS mental health of children and young people survey, which shows us what has happened over time to children’s mental health. There is an inflection point and it comes, contrary to what most people believe, before the covid pandemic. That is the first critical data point to understand.

The second critical data point is that when we look beyond that study at other countries’ studies, we see that none of them are perfectly comparable, but studies in countries such as Germany, France and the United States follow basically the same pattern. There is an increase in the prevalence of mental ill health conditions in all the published data that I have seen for other countries. Whatever people say about domestic politics, whichever party was in Government here and whatever they did, that cannot explain what happens in France or the United States. The fact is that there is a global trend, or at least a trend in the western world, of an increasing prevalence of mental ill health conditions among children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

“Are you going to ban teachers from carrying phones?”, I think is what she means.

[Catherine Atkinson]

I am grateful—

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

We have a run of new clauses here—49, 50 and 51—and I will speak about them at the appropriate moment. I will not move new clause 50 in the interests of time. During lockdown a lot of parents, including me, gained an even greater respect for the teaching profession, yet we do not treat teachers like other professionals. We do not expect doctors or lawyers to put up with the kind of abuse that is sadly still far too common for schoolteachers. The Bill does many things, some of them good, but as an editorial in the TES pointed out, it is strangely silent on discipline and the right of teachers and pupils to have a safe place to work. To fix that, we have tabled these new clauses, which can be taken together.

The first concerns properly managing and measuring the situation. What gets measured gets managed, but at the moment we have far too little data on the state of discipline in our schools and in alternative provision. That is why new clause 49 provides for an annual report, and it locks in the current national behaviour survey, which is so important and creates wider and regular reporting of Government action on this subject. Endless polls show that it is one of the top issues facing teachers. It is one of the most important things to them, and we know that it drives good people out of this most valuable profession.

New clause 50, which I will not move today, would create an annual report on alternative provision for exactly the same reason, as well as for reasons concerning achievement and behaviour in AP. I will speak about new clause 51 at the appropriate moment, but it is about encouraging Ministers to go further on the discipline agenda, which I know they want to do. It is so vital to academic achievement in our schools, but it is also vital to a decent childhood, to not having to live in fear and to an orderly society.

[Ellie Chowns]

New clause 70 concerns anti-bullying work in schools. Bullying is a serious and a widespread problem. Each year, one in five children report being bullied. It has devastating effects on children’s mental health, their sense of belonging and their ability to thrive. It is a leading cause of school refusal, failure to attend school and disruptive behaviour.

Children who are afraid to attend school miss opportunities to learn and grow. Bullying creates long-term harm. Victims of bullying often suffer lasting consequences into adulthood, including poor mental health, unemployment and a lack of qualifications. People who are bullied may also struggle with relationships and lack life chances. Bullying has unequal effects; it affects different groups unequally. Some groups are significantly more at risk, including children with special educational needs and disabilities, those living in poverty and young carers. Bullying also costs the economy an estimated £11 billion annually due to its impact on education, health and productivity, so it is a serious problem.

The new clause would require the appointment of anti-bullying leads in schools. Evidence shows that a whole-school approach is the most effective way to tackle bullying, but that requires co-ordination by a senior staff member. Appointing an anti-bullying lead potentially alongside and within existing roles such in safeguarding or pastoral support ensures a focused and effective strategy. It is important to record bullying. Systematically recording incidents helps schools to identify patterns, implement interventions and measure progress. This duty, which is already in place in Northern Ireland, can be streamlined with digital tools. Transparent reporting fosters trust, supports accountability and creates safer and more inclusive schools without burdening staff.

It is also important to look at teacher training. Currently, there is no requirement for trainee teachers to receive anti-bullying training, and nearly half—42%—of teachers report feeling ill equipped to address bullying. The new clause will require schools to outline what anti-bullying training is provided to staff. Short, targeted training equips teachers to prevent and respond to bullying effectively, creating safer schools and improving wellbeing and learning outcomes for all pupils.

This matters because of the effects that I talked about on children and young people. We hear heartbreaking stories all the time. The Anti-Bullying Alliance collects testimonies from children and young people. One young person said,

“All the way through year 10 and 11, I ate my lunch in the toilet.”

Another child said that it “scars you for life.” Bullying has devastating effects, but it is not inevitable. With the right systems and the right leadership in place, we can make a difference and make schools safe for everyone. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this new clause.

[Stephen Morgan]

New clause 49 sets out a requirement to publish an annual report on the behaviour of pupils in mainstream state-funded schools, and I will explain why the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston should withdraw it. The Department for Education already publishes the data from the NBS—the National Behaviour Survey—in an annual report. That is publicly available on the gov.uk website.