Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate on a Bill that is timely, and not simply because the current non-statutory guidance is now eight years old. It is needed because far too many families—many more than when the Bill began its parliamentary journey a year ago—are experiencing financial pressures of all kinds. The cost of sending their children to school adequately clothed should not be one of them.

I commend my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett for her opening speech and for picking up the baton to ensure that the Bill moves through your Lordships’ House as smoothly as possible.

The current guidance states that schools should give the highest priority to the consideration of cost and value for money for parents, but evidence shows that, in too many cases, that simply is not happening. School uniforms are important in promoting school unity and a positive ethos while also acting as a leveller. Yet current school uniform policies too often let down the most disadvantaged pupils.

I should declare an interest on behalf of my son, whose branded school uniform—as is the case for all maintained schools in the London borough where we live—has but one supplier. That is the source of many complaints from parents, on the grounds not so much of cost, I have to say, but of availability. The start of the school year often seems to take the supplier by surprise because the new term has usually started before it is able to deliver all the uniforms that have been ordered. However, I should say that, today, no uniform is required: to mark Red Nose Day, all children are wearing an item in that colour.

I do not often disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, but I must on this occasion. I am a firm advocate of uniforms, which can and should make children feel equal to their peers. They also remove pressures to flaunt the latest and often expensive label or brand of clothes or shoes. Yet they are not cheap. My noble friend Lady Lister quoted research released last week by the Children’s Society that showed that parents spend in excess of £300 a year on school uniforms for each child. The Children’s Society also found that some parents choose a school based on the cost of the uniform, particularly where PE and sports kits are concerned. Families should never be put in that position. That survey of 1,000 parents also found—as other noble Lords have said—that nearly a quarter said that the cost of school uniforms meant that their child had worn ill fitting or incorrect uniform. So much for being equal to their peers.

Compulsory branded clothing is the major contributing factor to the high costs of school uniforms, often meaning that families can buy uniforms from only one supplier. It is a basic rule of economics that exclusive suppliers raise the cost of whatever they sell, and that holds for school uniforms, even where a tendering process has been carried out. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hain, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and several other noble Lords that the Bill would have had greater effect had single suppliers been precluded—although, had that been the case, I doubt it would have progressed to this stage.

In November 2015, the Government published A Better Deal, which included a commitment to put the Department for Education’s existing school uniform guidance on costs on a statutory footing, stating:

“The government wants to ensure that effective competition is used to drive better value for money and will therefore put existing best practice guidance for school uniform supply in England on a statutory footing.”


So why continue to allow exclusive providers?

In September 2019, the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, wrote to the DfE in his role as chair of the Competition and Markets Authority, urging it to introduce legislation requiring schools to allow parents to shop around rather than insisting on a single supplier, after the CMA received an influx of complaints from parents on the issue that summer. The department responded, stating that the Government would put the legislation on a statutory footing

“when a suitable opportunity arises”,

although it did not commit to ending single suppliers. In that same month of September 2019, when giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, the then Education Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, said that

“there is a specific problem of a relatively small number of schools who use this requirement of monopoly suppliers for uniforms. I do not like it, because it is a pernicious way of excluding children from less well-off backgrounds.”

I cannot avoid asking the Minister whether she agrees with her predecessor.

Finally, the Bill’s Explanatory Notes state that the Bill

“will come into force two months after the day on which it is passed.”

In briefings to noble Lords, both the Local Government Association and the Schoolwear Association have pressed for a delay. I do not advocate a delay as such, because parents should have protection as soon as is practical, but a phased introduction, as suggested by my noble friend Lady Lister, would allow parents to make full use of existing uniforms and allow them and suppliers to plan properly for the introduction of new ones.

Statutory guidance is required, and we have no wish to see the Bill delayed. I look forward to assisting in it reaching the statute book by the end of the current Session, which we now understand means the end of next month.