Lords
Debate
23 June 2025
10 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging debate. As we begin, it is probably worth while identifying that the amendments fall into three related but distinct areas: the use of and regulation of social media, the impacts of screen time, and the proposals for the use of mobile phones in schools. I will …
On the point about regulation, the reason why I started by referring to the Online Safety Act was precisely to identify the need that was manifest in a piece of legislation that came through this House before my time but which presumably some noble Lords around the Chamber were engaged in and which …
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
19 June 2025
15 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, as I said in Committee on Tuesday, in 2022 the Competition and Markets Authority found the children’s social care placement market to be dysfunctional. It found that the largest private providers were making profit margins significantly above what would be expected in a well-functioning ma…
The noble Baroness cited analysis that expressed a concern that by capping profits, you would somehow or other reduce supply in the market. I was simply making the point that the converse—that is, excessive profits—has not driven supply in the market.
+13 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
18 June 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, I am also an occasional visitor to this Committee, but I am very pleased to be here this evening to address her Amendment 275. I thank her for recognising the engagement there has been with the Government and others on this up to this point.
Certainl…
Lords
Debate
17 June 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to amendments in group 4. As other noble Lords have identified, we have a market that is dysfunctional and not working appropriately. That results in the types of pressures and complexities for local authorities that we have heard about and has been described by several repor…
Lords
Debate
17 June 2025
8 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, before I turn to the amendments in the first group, I want to be clear, as many noble Lords have recognised, that the measures in Clause 10, together with those that we will come to later in Clauses 12 to 18, are part of an overarching, broad-ranging strategy to fix the market for placemen…
I will certainly take advice and look carefully at that, but I assure the Committee that the appropriate committee, the name of which escapes me, has of course looked in detail at the delegated provisions within the legislation and we will be responding to the committee and covering off any issues t…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
12 June 2025
9 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, in speaking to the amendments in this group, I recognise that there is an enormous consensus in this debate about the significance of family and social relationships for looked-after children, for children in care and for all of us. This is why we feel so strongly that these are relationsh…
My Lords, this has been a well-informed debate on the amendments in group 5 concerning foster care, particularly informed by those who have had personal experience. The noble Lord, Lord Young, gave his experience of being a foster carer and I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, made a very importa…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
12 June 2025
9 contributions
Post-16 Financial Education
I thank the Minister for her response. This week, many schools are taking part in Young Enterprise’s My Money Week campaign. However, despite best efforts, according to the Money and Pensions Service, over half of our young people reach the age of 18 having received no meaningful financial education…
My Lords, the Social Market Foundation reported last year—and this is very serious—that two in five young people, or 40%, are financially illiterate after they have been through school, so education in this field needs to start early. In the devolved nations, financial education is taught in primary…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
10 June 2025
7 contributions
Free School Meals
My Lords, when this Government came into office there were 900,000 more children living in poverty than there had been when the Labour Government left office in 2010. This was a stain on our country. It was a terrible way for those children to live, preventing them having what they needed day-to-day…
The Government are extending the entitlement to free school meals because we want children to benefit from them. We will keep under review the extent to which those free school meals and all the benefits that come with them are being taken up.
The noble Lord made a point about the stigma that some …
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
9 June 2025
6 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, this group of amendments has enabled us to hear a consensus in this House about the enormously difficult, tragic and appalling instances of child sexual abuse over the years, and that it is no longer good enough for us not to take important action to protect children in the most appalling …
In relation to recommendation 6, in very big consultation with the sector, the objective of the Government is to deliver on the intention of the recommendation while recognising—this is something that professionals have also raised—that, for the reasons I have outlined, a new legal route here not on…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
5 June 2025
2 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
What can I say? It is an utter pleasure to be here to respond to this debate. I was not aware that I had a choice; nevertheless, I am very pleased to make my first appearance in Committee on this Bill, which I see that noble Lords have been enjoying for several days already.
I am very pleased to co…
I am desperately searching for the note in my folder on yachts. I may have to write to the noble Baroness on that issue later.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hendy for his introduction to these amendments. As others have said, it was an interesting and important history of the progress that has been …
Lords
Proceedings
4 June 2025
5 contributions
School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations
My Lords, on 22 May we were able to announce that this Government will fulfil the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body and award a 4% pay increase to our teachers. Alongside that, we were able to announce an additional £615 million to fund that pay increase. That, alongside last year’…
The noble Lord is right that we have inherited a situation where school budgets are stretched. That is why we have already made available an additional £2.3 billion for the core schools budget in the October 2024 Budget, of which £1 billion was for high needs. We have also made available, on top of …
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
22 May 2025
18 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, as we start on these amendments relating to the operational delivery of multi-agency child protection teams, I will just respond to a few general points before I go into the details of the points that have been made and the amendments.
First, on the point the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill,…
I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord on his final point. That is exactly the objective in what we are trying to do here. Whether or not the evaluation, after a relatively short period of time, will give us conclusive proof about that, I would be unsure, but that is absolutely the objective.
W…
+16 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
22 May 2025
8 contributions
Social Mobility: Sutton Trust Opportunity Index
I thank the Minister for her Answer. The opportunity index shines a light on the great disparity of prospective outcomes for children and young people in London and the south-east compared with those in the north-east, particularly Newcastle. What consideration have the Government given to reforming…
I thank the Sutton Trust for this piece of work. It is worrying that, of the 20 constituencies with the highest ranking for opportunity, all are in London. Among the top 50, all but eight are in London. The lowest, of course, are in the north, including Newcastle, followed by Liverpool. We have had …
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
20 May 2025
3 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
I recognise that the intention of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is to test the extent to which family group decision-making can be used in other circumstances. I think it is a tribute to the significance and efficacy of family group decision-making that people are so keen to test where else it ca…
The fifth group we are debating comprises only one amendment, but we have had some useful contributions. However, quite a few of the arguments that I would make in response to this group were those that I made earlier in response to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Armstrong on the need…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
20 May 2025
6 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I thank noble Lords, not only those who have contributed today but those who have already contributed to the discussions on this important Bill at Second Reading. In fact, people enjoyed Second Reading so much that they decided they would have another go today.
The noble Lord, Lord Agnew,…
Good. I mean that it is good that we are now into the detail of what it is that we are here to consider. I am very pleased at the support and welcome for the process of family group decision-making, which I know is behind all the amendments and contributions that have been made today.
This measure …
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
20 May 2025
9 contributions
Assistive Technology
I thank the Minister for that quite helpful response—it happens every now and again. Would she give us some assurances that we will not get bogged down in issues of diagnosis but will go to a needs-based reaction for the technology? To get an assessment for a neurodiverse condition can cost you £750…
My Lords, I declare my interest as the chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. A vast amount of a child’s communication development takes place in the first two years of life. Without AAC specifically in these years, these children are already at a significant disadvantage, yet too many children…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
12 May 2025
9 contributions
Schools: Mobile Phones
I thank the Minister for her optimistic Answer to my Question. I wonder how many noble Lords are at this very moment distracted by the smartphone that they have with them. I look around and I see quite a few. Imagine then what it must be like to be the teacher of a class of 11 year-olds and to try t…
My Lords, school leaders, public health, Dan Tomlinson MP and the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign have come together in Barnet to become the first borough to ban smartphones in 103 primary schools, and 23 secondary schools are working towards removing smartphones entirely from the school day. Thi…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
7 May 2025
Antisemitism on University Campuses
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Cryer for securing this important debate and, in so doing, bringing the attention of this House back to the critical issue of antisemitism on university campuses. As others have referenced, the Community Security Trust report, Campus Antisemitism in Britain 202…
Lords
Oral Questions
7 May 2025
9 contributions
Sport: Supreme Court Ruling on Sex and Gender
My Lords, I proposed an amendment in 2004 to the then Gender Recognition Bill, which was agreed by your Lordships’ House and reflected in the Equality Act 2010, to exempt sports governing bodies from the legislation on the grounds of fair competition and the safety of competitors. Nevertheless, does…
My Lords, far fewer women than men, at all levels, participate in sport, and Sport England made money available to parkrun to encourage young women to participate. Because of the way parkrun keeps its figures, it allows men to self-identify and to have their times put as if they were women’s times, …
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
7 May 2025
9 contributions
Pupil Absenteeism
The Minister will know that the cohort of children who are severely absent—those who miss more than 50% of their classes—which amounts to about 120,000 pupils, are the most at risk of ending up in gang activity and other serious criminality. The previous Government did a good job on tackling this pr…
My Lords, the Institute for Government recently published a report, Reducing School Absence , which concludes that under the last Labour Government, absence rates for secondary school pupils fell by 42%. Its key recommendation is that the most effective way to tackle absence is to bring all parties …
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
1 May 2025
4 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, while I might have felt offended by the exodus of so many people at the end of Oral Questions, I am reassured by the large number of people who want to contribute to this debate today. It is an honour to move the Second Reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, for there are fe…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the comprehensive way in which she has set out the purpose of this key legislation. His Majesty’s Official Opposition welcome the Government’s ambition to protect children and ensure that they have the best opportunities in life, regardless of any challenges they m…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
1 May 2025
8 contributions
For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers: Interim Update
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer. I speak today primarily as a lawyer but also as the parent of a trans child, in the belief that these matters should and can be discussed in a non-partisan way, with respect and care for the rights of all involved. Does my noble friend agree that it wou…
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the EHRC. I hope I might be able to illuminate to the House what happened. I appreciate the Minister’s response. Does she agree with section 2.2 of the framework document that we have with the Government that the ECHR does not
“perform its functions on be…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
30 April 2025
4 contributions
Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]
My Lords, I will also speak briefly to the procedural Amendment 2. It is a pleasure to present the amended Bill to this House. The passage of the Bill has benefited from scrutiny from your Lordships and from the other place. I am heartened to have seen the clear commitment to addressing the challeng…
My Lords, I have no intention of opposing the amendments sent to us by the House of Commons. I regret the removal of the sole amendment passed by this House, which would, in my view, have given more time for Skills England to get its strategic work fully up and running before taking on the functions…
+2 more contributions in this session