Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lizzi Collinge Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

Today, I will concentrate on the important arguments for new clause 34 and amendment 173. New clause 34 would extend the provision of free school lunches to all primary school children. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), who tabled this important new clause for consideration in Committee, with the backing of 42 hon. Members, and to my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns), who moved it.

To set the context for new clause 34, the children’s charity Barnardo’s is clear that we are seeing epidemic levels of poverty among children in the UK. Across the country, families are facing a desperate struggle to put food on the table, keep the lights on and heat their homes. Nationally, 4.3 million children are in poverty; in my constituency, 3,920 children are growing up in poverty—that is 21% of children. This shocking state of affairs was a political choice made by the previous Government and those who backed austerity, and we should not repeat it. The No Child Left Behind campaign, which underpins new clause 34, is backed by more than 250 civil society leaders, from unions to charities, medical bodies to faith leaders and mayors to councils. This widespread backing is unsurprising because the case for universal free school meals is overwhelming.

The need for free school meals is acute. We all remember Marcus Rashford igniting the campaign during the pandemic, pointing out that we could fill 27 Wembley stadiums with the 2.5 million children who did not know where their next meal might come from. The shameful legacy of child poverty continues. Poverty is embedded, with research from the University of Bristol showing that one in five schools run a food bank—a figure that is, I am told, even higher than the number of community food banks operated outside schools by the Trussell Trust and the Independent Food Aid Network combined.

The National Education Union has explained that its members see the struggles of children in poverty every day, with 80% of teachers asked saying that they have provided food for hungry children out of their own pockets. One NEU member 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 2 years. It is heart breaking.”

A universal approach is the best policy for three key reasons. First, it is good for children. Universal provision helps children learn, grow and thrive in school. For example, research published in November 2024 evaluating London’s roll-out of free school meal provision to all children attending primary state schools found that the policy helped children’s readiness to learn and ability to concentrate. The Department for Education’s evaluation of the pilot undertaken by the last Labour Government found that pupils in schools where all children received free school meals were found to have made four to eight weeks’ more progress in maths and English over two years. In that pilot, the poorest children made the most progress, reducing the attainment gap. In areas with means-tested provision, the effect on the attainment gap was negligible.

On the health benefits, research published by the British Medical Journal found that less than 2% of packed lunches met school food standards, so this policy is a major opportunity to increase healthy eating. It would also reduce stigma and shame, giving pupils a better sense of belonging in schools. Means-tested provision leads to children feeling singled out and labelled as poor, impacting on their enjoyment of and engagement with school.

Secondly, providing free school meals for all is an effective investment. The evidence shows that universal systems reduce inequality and deliver economic prosperity beyond the classroom. A cost-benefit analysis of expanding free school meals by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows 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 schools and increased lifetime earnings and contributions for young people.

Other expert research shows that the provision of universal free school meals increases pupils’ lifetime earnings, with the biggest increase being for the most disadvantaged children, thereby reducing inequalities for a generation beyond school. Work by the Food for Life partnership demonstrates that when food is sourced sustainably, more than £3 in social, economic and environmental value can be created for every £1 spent, mostly in the form of new jobs in the local economy.

Thirdly, universal provision is more efficient. We know that providing free school meals helps end a situation where children fall through the gaps. Means-testing will always miss some children and families. In England, the draconian eligibility criteria mean that one in three children living in poverty are considered too well off to access free school meals. Restrictive eligibility, complicated registration processes and stigma also block countless families from accessing support.

Universal systems are also more efficient, because they massively reduce administration. By putting an end to means-testing children for food, schools get back administration time, as all children’s meals will be funded together via one mechanism. Free school meals for all also eradicate problems of school lunch debts. Universal policies are also easier to defend and protect from erosion by future Governments who may seek to freeze thresholds or restrict eligibility.

In the UK, Wales and London are leading the way in providing free, universal, healthy meals at lunchtime for every child in primary school as a means of reducing inequality—not just in school but for entire lifetimes. England needs to catch up. I sincerely hope that the Minister will consider building on the excellent progress on breakfast clubs contained in the Bill.

New clause 34 makes the case for free school meals for all primary school children, but I want to be clear that I and my party support the extension of this policy to all children in school, because hunger does not stop at the age of 11. I hope to divide the House on this vital new clause, which builds on the excellent breakfast club provision. I urge all hon. Members to vote for the new clause, because we know that children cannot learn when they are hungry and that free school dinners for all is a winning policy for the economy, for families and for children.

I turn briefly to amendment 173, on local authority consent for the withdrawal of certain children from school. Home education is an option that works extremely well for some families, and indeed many children thrive in this environment. Nevertheless, for vulnerable children, there can be real dangers in dropping out of sight of public agencies. The Bill already rightly mandates that if a local authority has live child protection concerns about a child, because they are suffering or are likely to suffer significant harm, then their parent must obtain the consent of the local authority to withdraw the child from school. Our amendment would extend that mandate to children for whom the local authority has previously had concerns and taken action under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 in order to safeguard and promote their welfare. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, supported by the Children’s Charities Coalition, has called for this strengthening of the Bill’s protections to safeguard the most vulnerable children, for whom withdrawing from school poses a risk to their safety and welfare.

Last year, the child safeguarding practice review panel published its analysis of serious case reviews involving children who have died or suffered serious harm because of abuse and neglect. Those children were not in school at the time, under the proviso of receiving an education at home. Of the 41 serious case reviews, 23 of the children —over half—were previously known to children’s social care, including being subject to a child protection plan prior to the incident. Under clause 25 as it stands, such children would not be safeguarded, which I am sure is not the Government’s intention. I therefore urge the Minister to seriously consider amendment 173 as a proportionate and necessary safeguarding measure.

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

As a member of the Bill Committee, I have had detailed oversight of the measures in the Bill. They are vital for safeguarding children across the country, as well as supporting children and families with measures such as free breakfast clubs, reduced school uniform costs and extra support for kinship carers. I am thrilled that three schools in my constituency have been chosen to pilot free school breakfast clubs. They will put more money back in parents’ pockets and ensure that all children start the day right with a healthy meal.

The Bill has been subject to healthy debate, both in this place and in Committee. It is a strong piece of legislation and one that has been strengthened through the parliamentary process. Looking through the amendment paper, I was interested to read new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), on auto-enrolment for free school meals. Parents have contacted me who are eligible for free school meals but are finding the application process difficult and are being passed between the school and the council. Auto-enrolment would help those children and families get the support that they are entitled to from day one.

It is important that children from all backgrounds have the same opportunities in life. I welcome measures aimed at tackling inequalities. I have spoken about the inequalities that arise from faith-based admissions to schools, where children are allocated school places based on the professed faith of their parents. I am pleased that the Government have confirmed the 50% cap on faith-based selection criteria for new academies and free schools. Faith-based schools are shown to be less diverse than their peers on a range of measures, including deprivation levels—measured by free school meals—the number of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and diversity of race and ethnicity compared with their local areas.

The evidence shows clearly that faith selection is social selection by proxy. In my opinion, selection by faith has no place in taxpayer-funded schools at all. The 50% cap on faith selection was brought in the previous Labour Government to address inequality, and at least ensures some regulation of that. However, I am still concerned that new schools opened by local authorities are not subject to the same cap. In cases of oversubscription, they could allow 100% faith-based admission. I have raised concerns about this directly with the Minister, and I thank her for taking the time to discuss it with me.

I am pleased that the Bill takes long-overdue action to tackle illegal schools. At least 7,000 children attend illegal settings—for obvious reasons, that is an estimate. Ofsted has been raising this problem for many years, because it does not have sufficient powers of entry and investigation into illegal schools. The Bill fixes that, granting Ofsted increased powers of entry and providing more powers to bring criminal cases against those schools and the people who run them.

Members may not be aware of illegal schools. They tend to be concentrated in specific local authority areas. Usually, they are run by religious groups, which tend to be fundamentalist, extreme, highly controlling or isolationist in their outlook. We know from former pupils of these schools that in many cases they only study religious texts and receive no other form of education. Instead of having a broad and balanced education, children are subjected to indoctrination. Children attending illegal schools have also been subjected to abuse, both physical and sexual. That is unacceptable and such settings must be regulated. If they are unwilling to be regulated and offer a proper education, they must be shut down.

I refer members to the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) in last week’s Crime and Policing Bill debate for a flavour of the attitude of high-control religious groups towards reporting abuse within their own communities. I also lay on record my thanks to Humanists UK for its work exposing the dreadful practices in illegal schools over the past decade. I welcome this Labour Government’s recognition of the severity of those problems and the swift action taken to safeguard those vulnerable children. I also welcome future discussions on how to manage the problem of part-time settings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

Does the hon. Lady accept that, in the tragic case of Sara Sharif, which my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) has been pursuing, the murder happened in the school holidays and Sara was already known to social services? There is not much evidence that the parents said they were going to home-educate in the first place. Given all those facts, does the hon. Lady accept that there is actually no correlation in the data between home-educated children and children who are ultimately judged to need a care plan?

[Lizzi Collinge]

I acknowledge the complexity of that case and that the absolutely unacceptable failings before Sara’s death were abject across many organisations. However, she was removed from school partly so that her parents could prevent the detection of the abuse. I have recognised, and will continue to recognise, that that obviously does not speak to the vast majority of people who home-educate their children. However, as parliamentarians, we have a duty to protect the most vulnerable, and sometimes that includes regulating the majority, who are decent, honest people.

I want to reassure parents that the new regulations, such as registers for children not in school and the capacity to compel school attendance in certain cases, are not aimed at limiting home education as a whole or about policing how people choose to educate.

[Graham Stuart]

The intention is not the thing; it is the actual impact that counts. Let us take the example of someone who has taken their child out of school for the reasons that the hon. Lady has mentioned. Perhaps they have an autistic child who is miserable every day, and after letters to the headteacher and the local authority and failure after failure, they are forced to go into home education. Can she understand why parents are fearful of a representative of—as far as the parents are concerned—that failing local authority having the right to enter their home and sit in judgment over the child that they have been forced to home-educate? Can she understand why they would be fearful of the imposition a hard, top-down register, especially after so many years of successive Governments failing to provide any proper support for home educators?

[Lizzi Collinge]

I accept wholeheartedly the amount of parents of children, particularly with SEND, who have been absolutely failed by our system and by 14 years of Conservative Government. What I do not accept is that the proposal is somehow a major imposition. I do not believe that checking that children are receiving a decent education and are safe and well cared for is a major imposition on parents, and I think all good parents would welcome that.

These measures are being put in place to protect and safeguard vulnerable children. Having no oversight of children not in school is an unacceptable risk to children’s welfare. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is crucial, and cannot come too soon to protect our most vulnerable children and to support families up and down the country with rising costs. It has the welfare of children at its heart, and I am proud to have served on the Bill Committee and to have played a role in shaping this vital legislation.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

Like VAT on independent schools and putting up costs through national insurance contributions, this Bill is yet another example of Labour turning children’s education into an ideological battleground. I have said it before, but I will say it again: Labour clearly hates any form of education that is not state-controlled, local authority-run schooling, and this Bill is another example of that. Under the Conservatives, pupils soared up international league tables, ensuring that every child, regardless of postcode—except if they lived in Wales—received the best start in life. Labour is intent on reversing that progress, attacking academic freedoms and dismantling a system that has delivered demonstrable results for young people. Indeed, it was a system that Labour used to champion, but now it has come back to power and is looking to dismantle it.

Most of this Bill is trying to solve a problem that does not exist. Like the Employment Rights Bill last week, it is bodged and being rushed through without proper scrutiny, and behind it all is the cold, dead hand of the union paymasters that fund Labour. I commented on it during debate on the Employment Rights Bill, and we have heard again today—I am afraid the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) has just left his place—that the “Jurassic Park” of the unions is back. Like last week, it is not Jeff Goldblum—

[Lizzi Collinge]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gregory Stafford]

I will finish my analogy. It is not Jeff Goldblum who is going to be savaged by the dinosaurs; it is our children.

[Lizzi Collinge]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr, to whom he referred and who has actually worked in schools as a teacher, might have a really good grasp of what happens in schools?

[Gregory Stafford]

It would be totally wrong of me to cast any aspersions on the hon. Gentleman’s teaching ability. I have not sat through one of his classes, but if it was anything like his speech an hour ago, I would perhaps be looking to find some other educational outlet for myself or my child.

While I acknowledge that some of the child protection aspects of this Bill are important, much of it represents a dangerous and unnecessary centralisation of power that will harm schools, teachers and, most importantly, pupils. In recent meetings I have had with the Last Wednesday SEND group, as well as with home education groups across Surrey and Hampshire, there has been overwhelming concern about the proposed legislation. Many of those I have spoken to feel vilified for choosing to remove their children from mainstream education in favour of alternative specialised provision tailored to the individual needs of their children.

I will take this opportunity to highlight five key amendments that I think are particularly important; I urge Members to give them their full consideration. The first is amendment 206, which would remove the requirement for all academies to follow the national curriculum. Clearly, a national curriculum can provide a broad and balanced education, but education is not a one-size-fits-all issue. The Bill seeks to stifle innovation, which is a dangerous and regressive move. It is particularly concerning for faith schools and alternative provision settings such as Pathways school, a SEND provision school in my constituency. Pathways school plays an invaluable role in educating vulnerable children and providing trauma-informed strategies alongside a high-quality, project-based curriculum. Excellent spaces such as those would struggle to continue under state-imposed education strictures.

As a parent, I draw attention to new clause 41, which would give parents the right to review school curriculum materials to ensure their children are fairly exposed to material appropriate for their age group. It is not controversial to say that parents have a unique and intimate understanding of their children’s needs, and it is only right that they have an active role in ensuring the quality and suitability of their children’s education.

Moving on to amendments 200 and 202 regarding home education, a key group in my constituency that have ardently opposed state-controlled education are the home educators. Home education is a provision used by many parents across Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere and Liphook, because it provides a more personalised approach to learning, which in some cases benefits certain children. Amendment 200 would mandate local authorities to submit a statement of reasons when they do not agree that a child can be home-educated. Families are deeply concerned that the Government’s proposals impose excessive state control over home education, failing to recognise the dedication and care that home-educating parents provide. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) said— I think I am quoting her correctly—that “all good parents would welcome” this imposition on education. That is deeply unfair to all the good home-educating parents who have contacted me. They do not feel that this is a proportionate measure; they think it is a deep imposition, and they are good home-educators.

Amendment 200 is a more proportionate way to address concerns while ensuring the accountability that the hon. Lady wanted. That is especially important for families with SEND children awaiting education, health and care plans—a process that can take up to two years. In my local area, 17% of independent school pupils receive SEND support, yet only 6% have a formal EHCP. Therefore, home education, especially in that interim gap between realising a child needs SEND support and receiving an EHCP, is often the best option for them. Amendment 202 would remove the requirement for local authorities to approve and consent to the home education of children with special educational needs. Removing those bureaucratic hurdles would empower parents to make the best decisions for their children and would ensure inclusivity and equity in education.

I want to touch on amendment 192 on neglect and abuse of children that is related to home education. Although I strongly support home education as a valid choice, safeguarding must remain a priority. However, home-educating parents feel vilified by this Government, who treat them as if they were inherently suspect, as the hon. Lady did, rather than recognising their commitment to their children’s education. Amendment 192 would ensure that local authorities may withhold consent for withdrawal from school where there are concerns about neglect or abuse. The entire House was horrified by the tragic case of Sara Sharif, and the amendment is a necessary, balanced and proportionate response—far more so than the Government’s broader proposals, which unfairly target responsible home-educating parents. Instead of a sweeping punitive approach, the amendment focuses directly on children who are genuinely at risk, ensuring that they remain in a monitored environment where safeguarding concerns can be identified and addressed.

The Bill is an ideological attack on academic freedoms which will hurt the very children who Labour claims to support. It imposes unnecessary constraints on schools, weakens parental choice and undermines educational innovation. The poorest pupils will suffer the most. Academic freedoms have driven up standards, allowing schools to tailor their curricula to meet the needs of pupils. Labour’s insistence on enforcing a rigid national curriculum will stifle progress and limit opportunities. Its move to weaken the academy system will leave struggling schools in limbo, harming the very children who need urgent intervention.

The Bill tears down 25 years of progress—progress that has had a demonstrable impact on children, improving their educational outcomes, life chances and business and employment opportunities, and benefiting the country as a whole. I urge the House to reject this damaging Bill and to stand up for the best interests of our children. Let us protect parental rights, uphold educational freedoms and ensure that every child has access to safe, high-quality and inspirational education.