Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 107, moved by our friend, the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and will follow the powerful speeches by the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Bennett. The amendment is timely. It supports our children, particularly those most in need. As we heard, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s analysis on child poverty in Britain has said that 4.5 million children are living in poverty—a figure that continues to climb, even after the most recent policy changes.

These are not abstract numbers; they are the lived reality of millions of families who are denied the security and opportunity that every child deserves. The amendment goes beyond rhetoric: it would require the Government to set binding targets, with clear timescales, and to account publicly for each step taken towards meeting them. Doing so would emulate principles behind other statutory frameworks. The most obvious is the Climate Change Act, through which parliamentary accountability has driven sustained action and cross-government focus. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, talked about eight separate departments having some sort of responsibility for child poverty. That rigour should be applied to the fight against child poverty.

Peer-reviewed evidence makes it clear why this matters. International literature also shows that poverty has causal, long-term impacts on children’s health, educational attainment and future incomes. Children in low-income families are more likely to suffer poor health, lower school attainment and diminished life opportunities than their better-off peers. Moreover, robust reviews find that increased family income improves children’s educational and health outcomes, including school performance and future prospects.

I am not just reviewing the literature: I speak before noble Lords with my own lived experience as someone who was on free school meals, who got subsidised school clothing and who could not afford to go to college simply because we were poor. I had to go and work on a YTS training scheme in 1988 for £27.50 per week, working 40 hours a week unloading lorries. This is my lived experience that I bring before noble Lords today.

The evidence also reminds us that policy choices matter profoundly for children’s life chances, and systematic measurement and accountability mechanisms are essential to gauge impact. The Government’s recently published child poverty strategy, which was mentioned earlier, forecasts that the current suite of measures could lift an estimated 550,000 children out of relative poverty. We should all aim for that, but without legally enforceable targets, there is no guarantee that those outcomes will be delivered and sustained across future Administrations.

Targets give shape to ambition; they transform good intentions into measurable progress. We should also heed lessons from within the UK. Scotland was mentioned earlier. Scottish poverty targets might not be perfect, but they have a guided, sustained policy focus, which has shown that, when outcomes are measured and monitored, progress is more achievable.

This amendment is a practical tool to ensure that Ministers cannot evade responsibility for promises they have made. It is a mechanism that will help ensure that every policy aimed at education, well-being, housing and family support is tested against the yardstick of whether it moves us closer to reducing child poverty. I therefore urge noble Lords from all sides of the House to support the amendment and help ensure that the Government are held accountable to the children of our great nation.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to add my name and voice to the force of nature that is my noble friend Lord Bird. We have heard points made forcefully by all noble Lords around the House. I think noble Lords all know what I do for a living; I am sorry to be boring about this.

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Moved by

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley]

114: Clause 30, page 52, leave out lines 33 to 40 and insert—
“(1) The appropriate authority of a relevant school in England may not require a pupil at the school to have to buy branded items of school uniform for use during a school year which cost more in total to purchase than a specified monetary amount, to be reviewed annually.(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify the monetary amount that may apply to—(a) a primary pupil, and(b) a secondary pupil.(1B) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1A) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment imposes a monetary cap, rather than an item cap, on branded uniform items.

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[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 114 and 118 in this group on the cost of school uniforms. This issue is about far more than clothing; it goes to the heart of the cost of living crisis. It affects children’s dignity and well-being, and, ultimately, their ability to learn and succeed in school. For too many families, the start of the school year is no longer a moment of optimism; it is about anxiety. Parents dread opening the uniform price list, knowing that compliance is mandatory and flexibility is limited. Branded blazers, logoed jumpers, PE kits and specialist items are often required from a single supplier, with costs running to hundreds of pounds per child, payable up front, when household budgets are already under severe strain.

The evidence is clear. Research commissioned by the Department for Education shows that the average cost of school uniforms and PE kits is close to £400 per child, rising to over £440 for secondary school pupils. These are not trivial sums. For families with two or three children, the cost can exceed £1,000 in a single year. For parents who are on low incomes, with insecure jobs or reliant on benefits, these costs are simply not manageable. The reality for many households is stark. Parents report cutting back on food, delaying rent or utility payments, or taking on high street debt, simply to ensure children are not penalised for incorrect uniforms. Some skip meals so their children can attend school properly dressed. Others are humiliated into asking schools for help or exemptions, knowing that support is inconsistent and often discriminatory.

The consequences fall most heavily on children. When families cannot afford the required uniforms, pupils are sent home, isolated from lessons or disciplined because their clothing does not meet school rules. Others attend school embarrassed and anxious that they stand out or are judged for their family’s circumstances. This sense of shame undermines confidence and damages well-being. This matters not only for children’s mental health but for their education itself. There is strong evidence that stress and financial insecurity are linked to poor attendance, reduced concentration and low attainment. A child worried about being reprimanded for their uniform is not focused on learning. Excessive uniform costs become a barrier to education rather than supporting it.

We must also recognise that this burden is not evenly distributed. Families in areas already facing high levels of deprivation, including parts of the north-east, the Midlands and coastal communities, report significantly greater difficulties affording school uniforms. High uniform costs in these areas compound existing disadvantage and widen attainment gaps that the Government rightly say they wish to close. A system in which affordability varies by postcode is neither fair nor defensible.

That is why my first amendment proposes a cap on the total cost of branded uniform items, rather than limiting the number. The item-based cap is insufficient. Single branded blazers can cost £50 or more and a logoed PE kit even more. What matters to families is not how many items are required but how much they are forced to pay. The clear financial cap is fairer, more transparent and more effective, while allowing schools flexibility.

My second amendment addresses the continued application of VAT on compulsory school uniforms, particularly for those of a certain size. In effect, this is a tax on clothing that children are legally required to wear to access education. The zero rating for school uniforms up to the age of 16 would provide immediate, targeted relief, particularly for families with multiple children and for those on the lowest incomes. These amendments do not undermine discipline, standards or school identity; uniforms can foster belonging and pride. But no child should feel ashamed or excluded because their parents cannot afford an overpriced item with a logo. If we are serious about supporting families, improving well-being and narrowing attainment gaps, I urge noble Lords to support these amendments.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I very much support all the amendments around trying to make uniforms more affordable, but I want to speak about a health time bomb that we are sitting on, much in the way that we spoke about smoking some years ago, or ultra-processed food. It is the whole question about PFAS in our systems: in everything we eat and touch, but in particular, in this case, in school uniforms. Uniforms that are made from fabrics that contain PFAS constantly contact your skin and the results and the emerging evidence are now incontrovertible. I also support Amendment 119A from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the health, generally, of uniforms.

Forever chemicals, as they are commonly referred to, are a group of over 10,000 chemicals that exist over many products. We call them “forever chemicals” partly because they are so widespread and partly because, so far, they do not appear to break down. They are relatively new, so we do not know whether they are going to break down in 100 years. Right now, though, they are not breaking down. The quickest way for any of us here to find out whether we have them in our system is to get the test, give a drop of blood and find out what is in your body.

Serious evidence is emerging. Yesterday morning I signed an NDA with Netflix in order to watch its newest documentary on the question of forever chemicals. In particular, this was around children, babies and fertility, but it obviously stretched to the wider implications for all of us, and in particular our children, because they have grown up in the plastic era. There is now evidence from Denmark to suggest that prenatal exposure is associated with reduced IQ scores in seven year-old children, and in Germany, there is new research showing that PFAS is significantly associated with reduced tetanus, rubella and diphtheria immunity. So it has effects all over the place. We must remember that these chemicals have been put into systems: not just our food and what we touch, or what we make things out of. There has been no FSA approval and there has been no FDA approval—it has just happened. All these chemicals are made by oil companies; plastic is a product of oil. Saudi Aramco is now the largest producer of plastic in the world, and production is growing as I speak.

Kids are thought to be particularly vulnerable; they have been found to have higher concentrations of PFAS in their blood than adults. One route of exposure is through the skin, and this brings me to the subject of school uniforms. They are often used in clothes to provide what they call “extra qualities”. So, if you get clothing that is “stain resistant” or “easy iron”—which, of course, is very tempting to someone on a time budget—these qualities in fact last for very little time. As you wash the clothes, they disappear, and then those chemicals end up in our watercourses. They are non-essential. There is no cost implication whatever to using them, apart from a gimmicky bit of advertising. I do not feel that the Minister really addressed this in Committee. Among other things, she said that

“the UK product safety laws require all consumer products to be safe, and manufacturers must ensure the safety of products before they are placed on the market”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 907.]

Turning this around, could the Minister update the House on whether the Government believe that the now overwhelming body of evidence that is emerging that PFAS is causing detrimental health outcomes is incorrect? Do the Government believe that the approach of our close neighbours, such as France and most of Europe, which have banned the use of over 10,000 substances, is in vain? At present, neither our product safety laws nor UK REACH is preventing harmful products being placed on the market. They are not working to protect children or adults.

In the summer, the Minister in Committee said there was work

“across government to help assess levels of PFAS occurring in the environment, their sources and potential risks, to inform policy and regulatory approaches”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 906.]

That was quite a long time ago. What work is being done, or are we just acknowledging a problem and not doing anything?

I appreciate that this is largely the responsibility of Defra, but it seems that our current approach is waiting for this disaster to happen. Would it not be more prudent to take steps at least to make schools and parents aware of this growing risk? An example of this is in Jersey—I appreciate that it is not part of the UK, but I happen to have been born there—where people are being treated with bloodletting, essentially leeching without leeches, because firefighting foam got into the watercourses and drinking water and filled them with PFAS. The state has taken some steps to reduce that, but, even then, our response was glacial.

I was disappointed that the revised environmental improvement plan, which was published before Christmas, said almost nothing about PFAS, but that the Government were

“investigating whether to restrict other PFAS in fire-fighting foams”.

I do not understand why we need to expend resources investigating what should be incredibly obvious. There was nothing about PFAS from other sources, and, unironically, the following paragraph said that we were a leader on chemical management. That is hard to believe. If this is the only work that the Government have done since Committee, I put it to the House that it is inadequate.

However, we have a chance here to make some small progress. This amendment would ban the use of PFAS in school uniforms. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause would set the limit for residual PFAS and textiles to

“no more than 50 mg”.

This would not allow producers to use a small amount of PFAS, because it is so prevalent in the water systems and in all our systems that you cannot—as was confirmed in the Netflix documentary that I watched last night—get the level back to zero. Noble Lords should find this fact alone really disturbing and I hope that it serves as an impetus. Our close neighbours in France and Denmark have banned the use of PFAS in all clothes, not just kids’ clothes. Indeed, in France’s case, it is banned much more widely, and there is an expectation that an EU ban will come quite soon.

While my amendment has been drafted within the confines of the Bill that we are debating, I urge the Minister to encourage her colleagues to match the EU’s approach, which is following the OECD’s definition of over 10,000 substances as PFAS and banning their use, rather than inventing our own definition and a new list. I accept that there is much about PFAS that we do not know for certain, but, as I say, I watched a Netflix documentary on this last night and, without a doubt, there is hard and fast evidence linking chemicals in our blood to declining birth rates, falling sperm counts and all sorts of other very complex medical situations.

I therefore ask for two things in the near term. First, can we change the statutory guidance that schools follow around considering

“sustainability and ethical supply chains, as well as engaging with parents and pupils when tendering for uniform contracts”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 907.]

Could something more specific be added to that guidance, so that the school uniform providers that are invited to tender must provide details of whether their garments contain PFAS? We are not saying “Remove it”: just put it on the label. Can a recommendation that schools aim to source school uniforms without PFAS possibly be included? If this is not possible, and they go ahead and contract a supplier whose uniform items contain PFAS, can those suppliers be required to label items so that schools and parents can make an informed decision? That is not going to cost us more money, and it is not just about saying that everything must be made of cotton. Cotton is obviously better, but cotton gets given stain-removal qualities and so on, which can also be bad. But this would put the responsibility fair and square on the producer.

Secondly, can the Government, at the very least, urgently consult on a wholesale ban of PFAS? If we do not, we risk becoming the dumping ground in Europe for all the school uniforms and other garments that the European Union is going to start rejecting and is starting to reject from now. That would be a very bad place to be.

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Despite the misgivings of the noble Lord, Lord Young, the Government strongly support the benefits of school uniform but believe that we need practical ways to ensure that it costs less for parents and puts less pressure on families. For that reason, and with the assurances I have given, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to what was a fantastic debate. However, I would still like to test the opinion of your Lordships’ House.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 191 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, to which I have added my name. In doing so, I declare my interest as honorary president of COBIS. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is unable to be here today, but I am grateful to him for sharing recent correspondence he has had with the Minister on this matter.

It is critical that we act to improve the safeguarding arrangements between schools here in England and international schools overseas. The Safeguarding Alliance has supplied a couple of very concerning examples of recent cases where the system has clearly failed. In one international school, sexually explicit material was discovered on a school-owned computer during recent IT maintenance. A subsequent investigation identified multiple videos showing a member of staff livestreaming and recording explicit content which was stored within their user account. The content was assessed as being of such an extreme nature that the local UK embassy declined to view or handle the material. A referral was made to the Teaching Regulation Agency, but the TRA confirmed that the matter fell outside its jurisdiction. The member of staff is now working in another country and able to return to teach here undetected.

In a second example, a nursery teacher was discovered by a parent in the act of sexually abusing a child within the school setting. The parent immediately reported the incident to the school’s senior leadership team. The school made an immediate referral to the relevant local authorities and attempted to report the incident to the TRA, but as the school was based overseas, the TRA was unable to accept or process the referral. The school had no clear alternative reporting or regulatory pathway for international safeguarding concerns involving a UK-regulated teacher. The alleged perpetrator subsequently left the setting, and their current whereabouts remain unknown.

For this reason, Clause 46 is very welcome, in that it extends the jurisdiction of the TRA to those who have previously worked in England. It will give much-needed assurance to employers as teachers return from overseas. However, there remains a narrow but significant gap: where an individual who is qualified to teach in England through IQTS has completed induction in a British school overseas but has never taught in England, there is currently no route for serious misconduct overseas to be reported to the TRA. As the Minister has agreed in correspondence, this covers a very small number of teachers, but this loophole remains a risk to children if it is not closed.

The substantive reason for the Government resisting this amendment was set out in a letter which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, received last night. In essence, it argued that the TRA cannot practically be expected to investigate such incidents overseas. Yet this is precisely what it will have to do with incidents in relation to Clause 46. I want to stress on behalf of both me and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that this amendment does not seek to turn the TRA into a global regulator or require the Secretary of State to investigate all misconduct overseas. It is tightly drawn, applying only to those who are qualified to teach in England and who may in due course seek employment in our schools.

Once Clause 47 requires all schools to employ qualified teachers and Clause 46 brings those who have previously worked in England within scope, this group is all that remains. It is a small cohort, but without this change, an individual who commits serious misconduct overseas may move on, secure a fresh reference and subsequently take up a post in England.

Safeguarding training reminds us that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility; it does not stop at national borders and concerns must be reported wherever there is a risk to children. This amendment is pursued in exactly that spirit, and I hope that the Minister will once again reflect on whether this narrow extension could be accommodated to deliver the outcome that I know we all seek.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I am also grateful to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and to speak to Amendment 191A in my name. During the debates on the Employment Rights Bill, Peers on this side of the Chamber welcomed the Government’s commitment to a review of Section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999. However, it is clear that such a review will not necessarily be economy-wide in scope.

What it cannot easily do is address the specific position of teachers and school staff, who work in one of the most highly regulated and safeguarding-intensive environments in the labour market. For teachers, disciplinary and grievance processes are not exceptional; they are a structural feature of the profession. Safeguarding law rightly requires that every allegation be taken seriously and investigated, even when later it proves unfounded. As a result, teachers and school leaders are far more likely than most workers to experience formal proceedings during their career.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak chiefly to Amendment 196A in my name and to Amendment 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I also attached my name. Given the hour, I am going to restrain myself on a lot of things. It is a great pity that we are doing this important business at this hour. The Minister, in introducing this group, talked about the need to improve the accountability of multi-academy trusts, which has not kept pace with the growth of MATs. We have heard agreement on that from right across the House. With that in mind, I am going to start with Amendment 197, which we have not yet heard the formal introduction of. I will not go through it in detail, but it looks at the remuneration of chief executives of multi-academy trusts. It includes the provision, under parliamentary scrutiny, to impose limits on that pay.

It might be a difficult job, but I think I am about to shock the House at 11.23 pm. A few days ago, the website Education Uncovered produced some figures on the pay of CEOs of multi-academy trusts—not the biggest ones but the group of the next biggest ones, ranked from 11 to 25 on the number of pupils. A £220,000 salary is becoming standard for these multi-academy trust CEOs—and you can add a pension of about £50,000. This is significantly more than the Prime Minister is paid. We have a fat-cat pay problem right across our society, but here we are talking about public funds allocated for children’s education going to fat-cat pay.

I said that the Education Uncovered figure was for 2025. For the largest trusts, I had to go back to a Schools Week investigation from last March looking at some of the highest pay, and a year ago the CEO’s pay at one of the multi-academy trusts had crossed the £500,000 a year threshold, while three more were on more than £300,000 a year. Unsurprisingly, the National Governance Association told Schools Week that benchmarking seemed to be leading to inflationary pressure—something some noble Lords here who know quite a bit about the financial sector have seen happening. It really is obscene that this is happening in our schools.

The Education Uncovered study shows that the larger trusts are spending more per pupil on these highly paid staff and less per pupil on pupils in the classroom than are smaller trusts and, particularly in England, local authorities and local authority schools. This is a huge problem of accountability, and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on bringing forward this amendment and seeking to deal with it. I cannot think of a reason why the Government would not think this a good idea.

I come now—very briefly, given the hour—to my Amendment 196. This follows attempts that I made in Committee, with the assistance of the National Education Union, to create something that would allow schools to get out of this mess when they are just fed up with it. It would allow parents fed up with multi-academy trusts that are not working—we have seen a lot of examples recently of multi-academy trusts imposing on local school communities disciplinary rules that have caused a great deal of upset, concern and fear for the well-being of pupils—a way to get schools out of this system that is not working for them.

In Committee, I brought forward the idea of an academy reversal order. It is very complex, given that schools in multi-academy trusts no longer have their own legal entity, but I made an attempt at doing that. I also attempted to say that it was a duty of the Secretary of State to produce an order like that.

Now, on Report, with Amendment 196A I am calling for the Government to create a duty for them to produce a report on the demand for, desirability of and mechanisms for the conversion of academy-run schools to maintained schools, within two years of the Act calling for a report. That would not direct anything to happen, but it asks for a direction to the Government to think again, in a Bill that already acknowledges that there are huge problems with the academy trust model, ends the presumption that all new schools must be academies and removes the duty to force schools into multi-academy trusts. We are clearly heading in that direction. Let us get ahead of the game and prepare for a future where we put schools back under local democratic control.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, regarding the amendments by my noble friend Lord Storey, research has shown no correlation between the pay of the CEOs of multi-academy trusts and the schools they have responsibility for. I hope the Minister can say whether there will be a mechanism to look at the pay of some of these highly paid officials and what responsibilities they have. There could be cases where people have responsibility for eight to 10 schools but get paid more than people with responsibility for higher numbers. That does not seem fair or right. I know it is late, but I thought it important that I raise this point on behalf of my noble friend.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

It is really late, but I tabled a similar amendment to this in Committee. Unregulated CEO pay is becoming an ever greater problem in the sector. Last year the policy think tank EDSK called for mandatory CEO pay scales capped at £263,000, with fines for those who did not follow that. The National Governance Association has said that the growing gap between CEO pay and that of other senior leaders—and, I would also say, teachers—risks undermining the collaborative leadership essential to school improvement. I hope the Government will look at this serious problem, which demands action.