Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister in her opening sentence stated that there are few subjects which unite people more than the well-being of children. I fully agree, and for that reason I believe there will be a constructive approach across the Committee when it comes to seeking ways to strengthen the Bill and achieve that objective.

The Roman poet Juvenal coined the famous phrase:

“Mens sana in corpore sano”—


a healthy mind in a healthy body. That emphasises the eternal interconnectedness of physical and mental well-being. It suggests that prioritising both is crucial for overall health, happiness and well-being. A healthy body can support a healthy mind by providing the physical energy and resilience needed for children to navigate life’s challenges. Conversely, a healthy mind can positively influence physical health for children by reducing stress, promoting better sleep and enhancing immune functions.

In the educational context, physical exercise is an essential part of mental and psychological well-being, yet here we have a Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in which, if you run a word search through it, there is not one mention of sport, physical activity or even physical education.

In the build-up to and during the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, as chairman of the British Olympic Association, I called for a sports legacy from the Games which would reach every pupil, whether they were in the East End of London or the northern parts of Scotland. The UK needed a radical new national school policy for sport, health and well-being. The situation has deteriorated year on year since then. The Bill turns a blind eye to the importance of physical education and sport and today’s concerns over the well-being of our pupil cohort, and instead recognises a world of growing obesity, declining participation rates, reduced PE hours, poor teacher training, inequalities in access, particularly for girls and children from lower-income backgrounds, and funding cuts. The Youth Sport Trust reports that fewer young people are meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines for daily physical activity, with over 50% of all our pupils failing to reach the recommended 60 minutes, which is a de minimis recommendation of moderate to vigorous activity a day.

There is concern about the decline in the number of PE hours, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Delays or cuts to funding for school sport, with uncertainty over the short-term funding programme for primary PE and sport premium, have led to schools using the funds for purposes not set out by government, and teachers often doing less than three hours of training for physical education during the totality of their teacher training. That is not a child-centric policy.

The pandemic has added to the problems and led to changes in how children play, with more time spent online and less time outdoors impacting their physical activity levels. Children are not learning to swim properly, with a third of primary schools delivering fewer than 10 swimming lessons a year. Yet, as I mentioned, there is not a single mention of any of this in a Bill on children’s well-being. You might as well write a health strategy without mentioning medical treatment.

In Committee, I intend to propose a wide series of amendments to rectify this oversight, to secure improvements to the Bill which place physical as well as mental well-being at the heart of school life. When it comes to school sport, state schools are in crisis: 40% of our medallists in the Tokyo Olympic Games came from just 7% of the population, those educated in the private sector—which is also under threat. It was 36% in London and 33% in Paris.

The noble Lord, Lord Layard, spoke of the vital need to measure well-being, both physical and mental. I could not agree more and will be fully supportive of any amendment which seeks to achieve this objective. Committee provides us with the opportunity to set out the changes necessary to ensure the Secretary of State’s objective—to improve the well-being of children—is achieved, and I look forward to taking that agenda forward.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for tabling it.

I would like to quote from a speech I made on 26 June 2014, soon after the terrible crimes of Jimmy Savile had been analysed in the Lampard report. Our campaign for the mandatory reporting of child abuse went back at least a decade before that, but the Savile case showed clearly what happens when people who know do not tell. I realise, as the noble Baroness does, that the Minister might tell us this is the wrong Bill to explore this issue, but I have always taken every opportunity to raise it, and that is why I am doing so again today.

On that occasion, I said:

“I have always felt that a child is his or her own best protector. We can do what we can to protect a child, but we cannot sit on her shoulder all the time. This is why it is so important that children are taught in every school, through a balanced PSHE course, how to protect their own personal integrity … They also need to be taught what a healthy, non-abusive relationship looks and feels like, and who to turn to in case of fear or of actual abuse”.


I still believe that this is every child’s right. I went on to say:

“We must then minimise the opportunity for perpetrators to reach vulnerable children”,


and to talk about the shortcomings of DBS checks, which

“are not enough, as they only identify those who have offended before, and are no use against first-time offenders or those who are clever enough to avoid detection”.—[Official Report, 26/6/14; cols. 1418-19.]

This is still the case.

In that situation, the knowledge or suspicion of abuse by adults around the child is a vital ingredient of protection. We need to ensure that those who know or suspect what is going on report what they know to an appropriate and responsible person. I mentioned that lawyers who acted for dozens of Jimmy Savile’s victims had told me that the most shocking revelation of all was the number of victims who had reported what had happened at the time to someone in their institution, only to be ignored and their claims covered up. One girl in Stoke Mandeville told a nurse what Jimmy Savile had done, only to be told, “You’re making a mountain, you silly girl. Do you know what he does for our hospital?”—how shocking.

That is why I believed then, and I still believe 11 years later, that we need a clear and comprehensive system for the mandatory reporting of child abuse which would make it an offence—with clear penalties—for those in a position of trust in a regulated activity to fail to report knowledge or reasonable suspicion of abuse. The person making the report need not know for sure that abuse was taking place; that is for the competent authorities to decide after investigation. Reasonable suspicion is all that is needed.

The amendment before us refers to regulated activity as defined in the Children Act 2004 and the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, both of which I well remember—though the definitions would need amending to exclude such confidential helplines as Childline. These measures have been successfully in operation in Australia for years, so I do not believe that it would be a problem here. I am grateful for the advice of Professor Ben Mathews—who also advised IICSA—about the Australian system. The idea that there would be a lot of mendacious reporting did not occur in Australia; in any case, one cannot fail to lift a stone for fear of the slime one might find underneath.

Childline advisers will often encourage children to report the abuse themselves to a trusted adult. In that situation, the child must be able to have confidence that, if they do so, their disclosure will be properly dealt with, and no concern about reputational damage should get in the way of that adult doing the right thing by the child. The only way children can have that confidence is to make failure to report abuse an offence. When a child gets up the courage to confide in a trusted adult about abuse, they do so because they want it to stop. Imagine how that child feels when nothing is done.

The intention of the amendment is not to put people in prison, except in the most egregious cases, but to change the culture. I believe that it would help workers to report abuse if they saw it as a public duty and not as telling tales. There is considerable public support for this. In an independent poll of the public in 2014, 96% of people supported it. I am not sure what the figure would be now, but, in the years since then, given the revelations of mass grooming gangs abusing young girls for years and nobody believing the children, I would think the figure might be even higher now. I urge noble Lords to support this amendment.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

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

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

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

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

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this group of amendments and to follow all noble Lords and give more than a nod to many of the amendments that have already been debated. I also wait in anticipation for my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s amendment, which I would have signed if I had been quicker with my drafting pen. I shall speak to Amendment 186 in my name and I thank my friend in sport, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for co-signing that amendment. I am also grateful to all organisations that have been in contact with me on the issues this amendment addresses.

The Government have set out their plans for breakfast clubs, but in many ways those plans are silent when it comes to children with special educational needs and disability. There is a whole series of risks with not being clear in the Bill in relation to the issues that are specific to those groups of children: not least the question of food itself and the attendant issues; transport—how those young people get to school in the first instance—and the specialist support that is often required throughout the school day. Without consideration of those three issues, it is likely that the plans will leave children with special educational needs and disabilities with suboptimal—or potentially no—ability to access the breakfast club provisions.

Current data shows that a third of children with special educational needs are entitled to free school meals but do not access them. That stat would increase if you considered the specific context of breakfast. The evidence is clear that, as other noble Lords have pointed out, when it comes to good-quality, nutritious food there is an academic benefit and a mental and physical benefit—food for thought, food for sport.

If a third of young people with special educational needs and disabilities are not enabled to take the opportunity of free school meals, it seems clear that the Bill needs to be far more specific when it comes to the nature of provision that can be inclusive for all those who would wish to benefit from such provision. It is a question not just of the nutritious food but of the social network and the relationship element. If SEN and disabled children are unable to access the breakfast clubs, they are cut out of not only the food provision but that important part of the social network—the relationship nature of the whole school day experience. What happens if the transport is structured in such a way that it does not get to the school until the official start of the academic school day? Again, SEN and disabled children are effectively excluded.

For many people, food can be a difficult subject to discuss. There are specific issues when it comes to those with disabilities, particularly those who suffer from ARFID and other such conditions. The relationship to food can be complex. The Bill is largely silent in this respect. If the Bill does not specifically address the issues around transport, the provision of that specialist support and food provision, breakfast clubs will not be inclusive and will not enable and empower those with SEN and disabilities. There are many start points in life that impact people’s educational career and, subsequently, their work career. They can be positive or otherwise. Breakfast clubs need to be in that positive bracket. Currently they are somewhere short of it.

In short, the Bill needs to be clear that breakfast clubs are inclusive for all. As ever, “inclusive by design” does not just mean making provisions that benefit those with special educational needs or disabilities. It means benefiting the whole school population and the whole school experience. If the Government do not make amendments to this effect, the outcome is far more likely to risk those children with special educational needs and disabilities being disadvantaged before the school day has even begun.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Holmes. I am a little surprised that we are making such fast progress in this Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is making her way here as quickly as possible from chairing another meeting, her amendment having been reached mildly in advance of when she thought. She is passionate on this subject. If anybody can get here quickly from a meeting, it will be one of our finest Paralympians in history. I hope that she will be joining us shortly.

I welcome that we have grouped the importance of food with that of physical education and activities. To use the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, if she had got her act together, I hope she would have also signed my amendment and the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. When it comes to activities, it is exceptionally important. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, a passionate sports fan and an exemplar of fitness and well-being from Lanarkshire, would also have added his name to this amendment. It is great to see the Minister for football now taking her seat on the Front Bench for this important debate, even if she is not wholly focused on the importance of the UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines, which are the subject of my amendment.

Before I come to Amendment 185A, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that I thought she spoke outstandingly well about the Healthy Start scheme, but while the Healthy Start scheme focuses on nutrition, physical education in schools contributes to physical activity and overall well-being, which are essential to a healthy start in life. I also thought that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, in focusing on provision before the start of the first school session to improve well-being, highlighted an important point about not just community sports but arts and music and their engagement in the schools programme.

In my Amendment 185A, I talk specifically about

“the provision of activities consisting of physical activity which contributes to the UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines before the start of the first school session on each school day”,

although, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, we could stretch that out throughout the whole school day. In that sense, this is a probing amendment.

By any educational measure, physical activity in our schools would be placed in a category of concern. It requires improvement. It needs special measures. Physical activity in schools, sport, physical literacy, teacher training, the opportunity to engage in sport and the benefits that come from sport in schools have been in decline over not just the past year but the past 20 years. I have said many times that one of the greatest sadnesses in my life has been the fact that despite an outstanding London 2012 Olympic Games, with the fantastic changes that took place in the East End of London, we did not leave a legacy for school sport or in opportunities for young people to engage in sport.

The Chief Medical Officer expects young people from five to 18 to engage in moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity for an average of at least 60 minutes per day across the week. This can include all activities, such as physical education, active travel, after-school activities, play and sports, including walking to and from school. That is a very low bar. In Australia and New Zealand, the chief medical officers add on top of that several hours of light physical activity. The chief medical officers in both those countries take walking and playing out. The UK Chief Medical Officer’s focus on one hour includes those things, so we have a very low bar.

Let us look at what is happening in the UK when it comes to delivering on those guidelines. I mentioned the Chief Medical Officer’s basic recommendation for physical activity. The reality is that 30% of children do less than 30 minutes of exercise a day, and a further 22.7% average between 30 minutes and an hour. That means that more than half our children, some 3.9 million, do not meet the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation. If that is not the definition of a crisis of physical education in schools and a crisis of opportunity for our young people, I do not know what is. It is essential that in an important Bill such as this, on well-being, we have at least some mention of physical activity, some mention of sport, some national plan that remedies and addresses one of the biggest crises that we face in schools at present.

I put today’s amendment out there as a probing amendment to set the scene for many amendments that are going to come before this Committee much later in the Bill when we will look in detail at what can be done. Right across the board, it is important to look at the curriculum, teacher training, facilities, and co-operation and engagement with local authorities and local clubs, maximising the opportunity for young people to participate in physical education and sport in schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

What I have been absolutely clear about is that the point of the early adopters scheme is to enable us to design the national rollout. If the noble Baroness wants me to commit to bringing back further information to the House, I am of course willing to do that. My point is that the information will in fact be much more widely available in terms of all of the issues that have been raised by noble Lords. I thought that I have been pretty clear about that.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the statement that was made by the Prime Minister earlier this afternoon, which is very welcome. It is very similar to a proposal made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which, sadly, did not happen, in the build-up to the London 2012 Games. One reason why it faltered was because the cost associated with delivering those objectives was very high indeed. I happen to believe it was well worth the budget. Can the Minister confirm whether the costs associated with what has been announced this afternoon will be covered by her departmental budget, or are they coming from elsewhere in government?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

No, I am not going to go into those details, and neither would the noble Lord expect me to. He challenged me about whether any announcements had been made, and I pointed him to one made today. I will just point out, however, that the reason why the plans outlined by Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not come to fruition was because, of course, after 2010, Gordon Brown was not the Prime Minister anymore and those who were did not choose to take forward those plans. That is why we have had to wait until this point, under a Labour Government, for another commitment to the sort of sporting entitlement that he asked about earlier.

To move on from breakfast clubs, I turn to Amendments 190 and 194 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Boycott, which seek to establish a school food improvement scheme and to update the school food standards. I recognise the importance of these reforms and the vital work that noble Lords have done to raise the profile of school food policy. That is why I am pleased that my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State was able to announce in the other place, on 5 June, that we are working with stakeholders and experts from across the sector to revise those standards, to ensure that they support our work to create the healthiest generation of children in history. We will share further details on this consultation in due course. I invite noble Lords to engage on this, including on the important question of how we can ensure that schools comply with the updated school food standards. I am sure that that will build on the work already done by the compliance pilot and by the work done to support governors to challenge and assure the quality of food that is being offered in their schools.

There were several questions raised relating to free school meals and entitlement. We will of course have the opportunity to return to those and to deal with them when we come to the group that is specifically about free school meals. That is why I am not covering them now.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

The noble Lord returns to a theme he has raised before.

To conclude, children have 13 precious years to gain the knowledge and the skills that will set them up for their adult lives. All children need to be ready to take advantage of that from day 1, including children who learn differently and therefore need different support from the very beginning.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise in support of the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Cash on a national strategy to promote the health, development and school readiness of all children from birth to the age of five. I agree with everything that has been said in this Committee on this subject. The Minister will know that I will always take an opportunity to rise in support of what we will eventually come to: a national strategy for schools, sport, health and well-being.

But, as my noble friend Lord Young highlighted, this should not be just at primary or secondary level. It is vital also to think about this in the context of early years intervention. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, in her place—she is a passionate champion for children and has done an amazing amount of such work in her life. The Centre for Young Lives emphasises the importance of the expertise in this Committee in looking at the early stage of development and focusing not on a postcode lottery of accessibility to services but on a national strategy and trying to bring together all the good work that is under way.

In that context, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, would normally also talk about early years activity and the importance of physical activity for young children’s development, promoting play and an active lifestyle, building physical literacy, enhancing learning readiness and encouraging habits that can be sustained throughout life. Getting confidence into young children through physical activity is vital. I commend to the Committee the work done by many organisations specialising in early years physical activity programmes—Early Movers comes to mind. It has highlighted that there has been a decline in physical activity among young children, and its work therefore brings our attention to that decline. The Youth Sport Trust’s Healthy Movers recognises the importance of providing training and resources for early years staff to support physical and emotional well-being in young children. There are many other organisations—Hidden Talents, Tiny Tots Yoga and BBC Tiny Happy People—all offering different programmes.

The common denominator among Committee Members this evening on this subject is that we really do look to see whether it is possible to bring together a lot of the evidence of best practice in a national strategy. I urge the Government to look at that carefully, because the benefits of early physical activity are undeniable. Improved physical development is the first. Enhanced cognitive development is undoubtedly a benefit. Social and emotional development comes from building confidence, teamwork and social skills. Long-term health is critical in early years intervention. A focus for those early years is important, as are outdoor activities that match those objectives, such as walking, playing in the park and exploring nature, as well as indoor activities such as dancing, playing with blocks, messy play—finger painting with rice—and using climbing frames. These are all important components of early years activity, and we need to structure those activities. That is where Sure Start was so good, as my noble friend Lord Young said. It showed that one could bring all this together and that it was possible to have a strategy that focuses on best practice for all young people, rather than, as I say, having a postcode lottery whereby some were the beneficiaries of the many charities and initiatives.

I have made a short intervention on this, but a really important one on the wider strategy, as far as I am concerned. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that the Government are thinking about responding positively to try to bring together all best practice, in the interests of all our young people, because there is no doubt at all in my mind that the issues and objectives that I have set out should be universally available, and I very much hope that through this Government they will become so.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, was not here at the beginning of this debate, so she has asked me to say that it is really important that there is good liaison between education and health.

I really feel that I am in a bit of a parallel universe. We are being told about the importance of integrated early years help, and we had such a programme with the Labour Government, which was enormously successful. Yesterday, I read an Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis that showed that it reduced hospitalisations for mental health among 12 to 14 year-olds by 50%, and that it

“improved the dimensions of school readiness—communication & language and problem-solving”.

It was most effective in targeting the most deprived communities—so the stories about how the children who needed it most were least likely to get it were not true. The first 700 Sure Start centres were set up in the most deprived areas—and, actually, there was a lot of work that showed that it was the universal element that made it so important.

It is like a parallel universe, when we know that, during the period from 2010 to 2024, there was an exponential rise in child poverty, which is at the root of lack of school readiness and childhood illness, as well as family dysfunction. Nine children in every class of 30 on average will be living below the official poverty line, and that exploded under the coalition and previous Governments as a result of austerity. So, absolutely, yes, we need an integrated approach—but I sometimes feel it might be helpful for the Opposition to acknowledge what their role was in destroying that provision, which was there for the most deprived and for all children and young people.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 479 in my name. Before doing so, I offer an apology to noble Lords, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Holmes of Richmond. I added my name to their amendments in the previous group and fully intended to speak in support of them, but I got my timings rather wrong and did not arrive here until the first three speeches had been made. Because of that discourtesy, I felt it would have been inappropriate to contribute on that grouping.

Amendment 479 would not mean a material change for schools and colleges because it aims to make the existing guidance statutory, with programmes and support around that guidance already in place. Previous Governments have acknowledged concern at the worsening mental health among children and young people, with the most significant policies stemming from the 2018 Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care joint Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health. That referenced the non-statutory guidance issued in 2015, Promoting Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing: A Whole School or College Approach.

I welcome the fact that the Labour Government have continued with this commitment. The announcement from the Department for Education in May indicated that the rollout of the mental health support team programme will continue, with additional funding committed for this year and full rollout—aiming for 100% coverage of schools—expected by the end of the 2029-30 academic year. However, as the guidance is non-statutory, there is a current inequity of access to support for schools that would like more help with improving mental health and well-being in their setting. Most schools will have a trained senior mental health lead who understands whole-school approaches, but that person is often a current member of staff who may be juggling other roles, such as a pastoral lead, a SENCO or a safeguarding lead. Also, many schools may not have further access to a mental health support team until that programme reaches its conclusion by 2029-30.

Additionally, without statutory status, leaders and senior managers in schools may be tempted, understandably, to overlook this approach to improving a school’s ethos and environment when they are faced with a range of other issues, not least the challenges presented by attendance and behaviour. The Schools Wellbeing Partnership campaign group argues that, by improving the mental health and well-being of pupils, attendance and behaviour can be positively affected. This forms the foundation of support for all pupils, so that they can feel a true sense of belonging at a school and can thrive in that school’s environment. Whether or not the current guidance is made statutory, it certainly requires updating; incidentally, that last occurred in 2021.

With that in mind, I want to elaborate a little on the points listed in my amendment on whole-school approaches. There is an old saying: “You cannot improve what you cannot measure”. This relates to what the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, just said about evidence. Incidentally, I say to him in passing that I have bad news for him: he suggested that Manchester United are not as bad as seventh in the league table, but it is twice as bad as that, I am afraid. You have to measure before you can begin improvements. Identifying and measuring children and young people’s mental health and well-being will offer the necessary data, which schools can use to improve their environment, their teaching and their support.

I welcome Amendment 472, but a whole-school approach already has the tools to respond to that data. However, the current guidance needs to be strengthened to offer more robust information about schools. Updating the guidance and making it statutory would support schools in turning data into action plans and action plans into improvement, although that improvement will require further training for mental health leads. The training for staff taking on these roles ended in March this year. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will be able to say if and when that essential training will resume.

Access to mental health support in schools was a manifesto commitment last year, and I commend the Government for wasting no time as that delivery has now begun. That is very welcome, of course, although there is concern that some mental health support teams are not able to provide the support that some specific cohorts of children require in some schools.

Finally, I want to touch on wider aspects of a whole- school approach. The Schools Wellbeing Partnership has long campaigned on this issue and recently published eight principles necessary for that approach to be fully effective. I will not list them just now due to the time, but I am very encouraged to note that all eight of those principles are contained in Ofsted’s proposed new inspection framework, so there is a very good chance that they will soon enter the mainstream. That would strengthen the effectiveness of the whole-school approaches necessary to ensure that children’s and young people’s mental health are taken seriously, and the necessary support is properly resourced. That support is too important to be left to optional guidance and simply must be made statutory to ensure those in need of it get the support that they deserve.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, to which I have attached my name. I have to say that after such a powerful speech—probably one of the best we have had in Committee—I was sort of waiting for the Minister to jump to her feet and say, “Look, I can bring this to an end and accept that amendment. It makes such consummate sense that we need to underpin with data all the ambitious goals we have for the well-being of children”.

What can we do without data? Introducing policies that we do not know are effective or ineffective costs too much; we need data. Nobody is arguing today that this data should be compulsory among all schools. This is voluntary, but I expect virtually every school I have ever visited in the state sector to want to do this, to be party to this, because there can be opportunities to benefit from this as well.

Some of us had the opportunity the other day to listen to the CEO of Lego, Niels Christiansen, who was giving a presentation here in Parliament. He was talking about the work he and his company were doing with young kids—five year-olds in Slough—to get fantastic benefits at an early stage in life by playing with Lego rather than playing online. If you had the data and the evidence that companies such as Lego were doing such good work, more schools would want to do that. Having that information available would be second to none.

I am confident that this evening the Minister is going to be wholly supportive of this amendment. I am not going to dwell on the points that have been made so far, but on the reasons why. How would the measurement we are talking about benefit the well-being of young people? It would promote children’s mental health, enhance learning outcomes, promote fairness, strengthen accountability and build a healthier and fitter society. It would have long-term social benefits. Schools play an absolutely central role in shaping future citizens, and this information would help us foster well-being, which improves social cohesion, productivity and public health. It would help us create a national policy to support the UK’s wider commitments to tackling not just mental health problems but physical health problems and challenges, and it would reduce pressure on the NHS.

This data would support teachers and staff. Well-being measurement data can highlight systemic issues such as high-stress levels and workload concerns that also affect staff and allow us to address them. It can lead to healthier, happier school communities, benefiting both students and educators. Staff can use insights from well-being data to tailor pastoral care and teaching more appropriately and more effectively to the problem.

We can have a cultural shift in education. The more we know what is going on in schools on this front, the more we can do to have a cultural shift. Embedding well-being measurement reinforces the message that mental health and physical health is an important issue and, in many ways for many children, just as important as academic achievement. It normalises conversations about well-being and reduces stigma around mental health issues. This shift helps prepare young people for life beyond school, fostering resilience and emotional literacy.

I can see that the Minister is just about to get to her feet to accept this amendment. But if, in the event, she is just going to pause to reflect because she wants to hear a little more about how this amendment is going to benefit her Bill, her reputation and her legacy in education, I will say this: regular well-being measurement can help schools identify mental and physical health and well-being challenges before they escalate into serious issues. Earlier detection enables timely support, reduces long-term risks such as school dropout, self-harm and disengagement, and preventive intervention is more cost-effective than crisis management in the health and social care systems.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 492 in my name I give more than a positive nod to the other amendments in this group. For Amendment 492 I also thank my friends the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Sater, and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for co-signing this amendment. I commend them for all the work they do in this area.

We have a physical and mental well-being crisis in this country. In previous sessions on the Bill, we have rightly discussed the mental well-being crisis. My Amendment 492 goes to the heart of the physical well-being crisis. It is costing the taxpayer in the billions, it is breaking the NHS, and at a community and—crucially—individual level, it is an absolute tragedy, which can, should and must be avoided.

My Amendment 492 simply suggests that the Government should look at a means of incorporating the Chief Medical Officer’s advice on weekly and daily physical activity into the school programme. Be in no doubt, I am not talking here about competitive sport. I am not talking even about games. I am talking about physical literacy and physical fluency: moving, dancing and being in this great physical form of our human selves which we are born with.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. It is a very simple amendment, but it could make a profound difference to so many people’s lives. I beg to move.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 492 in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes, which he very eloquently summarised for the Committee. I will also couple it with my Amendment 502J. First, I will reflect on some of the key issues behind the need to improve physical education programmes of study in the UK school curriculum.

To me, physical education is not merely a subject; it is a cornerstone in the development of young people, fostering health, resilience, teamwork and confidence. Yet despite the considerable investment in PE and sport premium funding, programmes of study across UK schools remain inconsistent, underresourced and insufficiently ambitious. It is imperative that we take decisive action to ensure that every child has access to high-quality, inspiring physical education.

First, the curriculum must be rigorously structured yet flexible, ensuring progressive development from foundational movement skills in key stage 1 to more complex games, athletics and leadership opportunities in key stage 4. This structure should be underpinned by clear learning outcomes, encompassing not only physical competence but personal, social and cognitive development.

Secondly, teacher training must be enhanced and continuous. Too many schools rely on external coaches or undertrained staff, which undermines sustainability and consistency. Ongoing professional development, supported by national standards and mentoring, will equip teachers to deliver high-quality, inclusive PE lessons that inspire pupils across the ability spectrum.

Thirdly, inclusive practices must be central. The curriculum must accommodate disabled pupils, those less confident in sport and the unrepresented groups, ensuring that all children can participate meaningfully. Adapted activities, peer mentoring and differentiated assessment can facilitate this inclusivity, and inclusivity is essential.

Fourthly and finally, the curriculum should embrace innovation and breadth, incorporating non-traditional sports, dance, outdoor recreation and cross-curricular activities to engage diverse interests and build lifelong participation habits, such as participation and partnerships with local sports clubs, universities and community organisations, all of which can further enrich provision.

In short, by strengthening structure, training, inclusivity and innovation, we can transform PE from a marginal subject into a vibrant, central element of the school experience, preparing young people not only to be active but to thrive in life. With that in mind, I turn to my proposal—a call to action—for a national strategy for physical education and sport in schools.

As a former Minister for Sport and a former chairman of the British Olympic Association, I have witnessed first-hand the transformative power of sport in shaping young lives. However, it is with a sense of urgency and concern that I address the current state of physical education and sport in our schools, not just over the last year but over a number of years. The absence of a cohesive national strategy has led to disparities in access, poor facilities and too much time allocated to travelling to and from sport during the curriculum, with the outcomes undermining the potential benefits that sport can offer to every child.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend has covered what happens in school, but that is just one area of activity. If it is done properly, school is merely part of a greater continuum that goes out into the community. The school sports partnerships were going to save the breakdown in the traditional links between small clubs, grass-roots sports and school, but they were not there for long enough for us to know whether they would. Many of us in both bits of the coalition Government thought that it was one of the weirdest things possible that they were kept going until the Olympics and then cancelled afterwards when we might have got some benefit. I got a small nod from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—a bigger one now—which says, “That’s exactly what we thought at the time”.

We also knew from that and from looking at studies that a big sporting event is great for tourism and volunteering but does not make any difference to grass-roots sport unless you back it up with something—with your inspiration. Schools have to work with the grass roots. In the amendments, we have the start of that structure, which we can go forward with. It is not just in this Bill or with this department. If we are going to lose lots of playing fields in the planning Bill, it does not matter what you do because you will not be playing anywhere else—probably not even at schools. We have to have something that goes forward. These amendments start to look slightly broader.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My noble friend in sport mentioned playing fields. One of the most important roles that Sport England plays is that it is the statutory consultee for playing fields in this country. It was exceptionally worrying when, just a few months ago, the Government announced that they were putting out to consultation whether Sport England should continue that role. Does my noble friend in sport see anybody else performing that role? Will it not be even more damaging to playing fields in this country, which are so important to the public at large, if there is nobody among all the statutory consultees whose job it is to ensure their survival?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

The answer is yes, yes and yes. I hope that the Minister will make sure that her colleagues in other departments take this on board. I moved an amendment on the planning Bill seeking to ensure that this duty is still there. I know that I am asking the Minister to part the Red Sea and take the salt out at the same time, but I am hoping for two parts of government to talk to each other on this.

We want people to remain active for all the reasons that we have stated. Physical activity leads to better exam results, which we seem to forget. If schools are to provide the initial smorgasbord of finding the right form of physical activity for individuals’ physique, culture and temperament, then I hope that the Government talk across departments in support of these amendments. I would like to hear from the Minister that they are having a coherent look at this and that they will lead other departments to do something solid. The Department for Education is best placed. We could ask the Department of Health but it would get buried there. If a lead department takes this on, there is a chance of achieving some of these aims. These amendments, or ones like them, are essential to making sure that we have a duty saying, “This is what you should be doing”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Thank you. If you had seen how fast I did it—or how slowly—you might not have been quite so impressed.

Of course, it is not only organised sport that is important. As several noble Lords said, other ways of moving our bodies, including dancing, are also beneficial, although people who saw my performance on “Strictly” would not necessarily recognise any benefit that I gained from it—or that anybody watching it gained. However, the point is that physical activity, the opportunity to move in a whole variety of ways and the requirement to make that as inclusive as possible are really important and at the heart of what the Government are trying to do.

In June, the Prime Minister announced a new national approach to PE and school sport. This new approach will establish a PE and school sport partnership network, designed to build stronger links between schools, local clubs and national governing bodies—to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Its aim is to identify and remove barriers to participation in PE and school sport, particularly for less active children, including girls and pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. The point made by several noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about the need for this to be inclusive is very important. That is why we have recently announced a one-year grant of up to £300,000 to a consortium led by the Youth Sport Trust to deliver Inclusion 2028, a programme which upskills teachers to deliver high-quality, inclusive PE, school sport and physical activity to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. This will be an important theme of the national approach as well.

Since the announcement on the school sport partnership network was made, the Department for Education, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Health and Social Care—here I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that, given the broader consequences, this needs to be a cross-government responsibility—have been working with the sector to co-design the partnerships, meeting with a range of organisations, including educational organisations and national governing bodies of sport, to discuss the key principles they would like to see in a new model.

Furthermore, the Department for Education is conducting market engagement events from 24 September to explore the procurement of a national delivery partner to design, implement and manage this new network from summer 2026. Procuring a national delivery partner reflects a significant investment in this approach. The market-testing phase will help shape the scope and scale of delivery, ensuring that any funding allocated is aligned with the ambition and impact we expect from a national partner. The intention is for the national partner leading the PE and school support partnerships network to distribute a significant budget each year to pay for targeted provision in local areas. The total funding for this will be confirmed as part of the department’s business planning.

In addition, we are working with experts to develop a new enrichment framework by the end of the year, highlighting best practice and considering how standardised benchmarks and tools can support schools. This will provide advice for schools on how to plan a high-quality strategic enrichment offer and how to make use of specific programmes to increase access to sport and arts.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I make just two points that I am sure that the Minister will recognise. Many in the Committee this afternoon have been campaigning exceptionally hard for improved opportunities for young people in sport and recreation, irrespective of who has been in government. One of the great aspects of this House has been frequent cross-party support for making sure that we try to improve the provision of sport and recreation. I do not think it is a party-political point. I remember that, soon after the turn of the century, possibly the most important influence on Tony Blair’s decision to move forward with the bid for the Games was a debate in this Chamber which had completely cross-party support. One needs to be a little bit cautious before saying, “Why didn’t we speak out before?” Many of us have been speaking out like this for decades.

My second point is that I acknowledge—and I am grateful to the Minister for raising the fact—that the Prime Minister has indeed come forward with a whole range of initiatives on access to high-quality PE and sport for children, equal access, two hours of sport a week and a national network to build strong partnerships with clubs. We are just putting into an amendment what the Prime Minister himself said in June, to make sure that it is actually done. It has not been done by successive Prime Ministers—I must admit, of both political persuasions—but not least by Gordon Brown. There were fine words, but it was never put into practice. Will the Minister be the first to support me in coming back at Third Reading with everything that the Prime Minister said when he met the Lionesses, as clear mandates, so that we can enshrine it in legislation and make sure it happens for the young people of this country?