Lord Agnew of Oulton — Hansard

Lords Debate 20 April 2026

They should have known better. What we have heard this afternoon is that, at the 11th hour, the Government are focusing on trying to get an amendment right on published admission numbers. We have not seen that work yet and it is the 11th hour. As a result, I would like to test the opinion of the Hou…

Lords Debate 25 March 2026

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, my noble friend has already spoken to Motion N. I beg to move. Motion N1 (as an amendment to Motion N)

Lords Debate 16 September 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I speak in support of my Amendments 452 and 454, on the control of admissions into schools. This is a fraught issue for parents trying to get their children into excellent schools that lack sufficient places, so rationing—that unpleasant word—has to apply. Where the shortage of places is s…

My Lords, I will address my Amendment 481. This group is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think that my amendment is relevant and important, as it seeks to level the playing field by ensuring that there is a high level of financial governance for local authority schools compared to academies. Yet again, …

Lords Debate 10 September 2025 3 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 432A from the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Blackstone, who spoke very well. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, is not here. He spoke very movingly, but I do not believe that any group in our society should be given the right to entirely excl…

My Lords, I speak strongly in defence of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and his Amendment 435, supported by my noble friends Lady Barran and Lady Spielman, which is long overdue. When I was the Minister in 2017, it was the first thing I tried to do, and I ran into a turf war between Ofsted and the d…

+1 more contribution in this session

Lords Debate 21 July 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran in her Amendments 111A, 111B, 116A and 116B. I have not spoken on the Bill before, so I refer noble Lords to my registered interests, in particular as a founder of a multi-academy trust with 18 schools and around 1,400 staff. This new negotiating body…

Lords Debate 3 July 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I am taking a slightly different approach with my Amendment 200, which relates to school uniform policy. It is important to recognise that a tiny minority of schools use the cost of uniforms as an unpleasant instrument to screen out children in poor families—I am not in denial of that. Ho…

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Nash’s Amendment 279. It suggests a very mild tweak to the proposed legislation, largely because he is respectful of the majority of parents who do a good job in home education, which I completely agree with. However, I see at close quarters the impact of hom…

Lords Debate 23 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group—I was a minute or so late, for which I apologise. I wanted to hear the arguments of those who oppose Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I will just address a couple of those. I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that we …

Lords Debate 19 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott’s amendment on jobcentres. I hear the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about resource stretch, but from my own experience of this in my academy trust, we have about 50 looked-after children, and I require a rep…

Lords Debate 17 June 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 119 would provide further opportunities for looked-after children, or those on the edge of care, to have access to boarding school places where appropriate. The principles of this amendment are the same as those of my Amendment 82, on children in or going into kinship care, ex…

My Lords, there are around 35 state boarding schools in the country, but there are also a number of private boarding schools that are ready to provide support, which is why I mentioned the Royal SpringBoard scholarships and bursaries that are available. I completely accept the noble Lord’s point—tha…

Lords Debate 12 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 82 would provide further opportunities for children in kinship care to have access to boarding school places where appropriate. The Government should be applauded for their commitment to raising the profile of kinship care as a vital part of the ecosystem for children from bro…

Lords Debate 5 June 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran in her amendments, as I am rather confused by how this will improve the education system. I speak as someone on the front line. As of today, my academy trust employs 717 non-teaching staff across our 18 schools. We provide high-quality benefits to our…

Lords Debate 22 May 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, this is really a probing amendment. I am the first to admit that this is not an area in which I have deep expertise, but my questioning comes from the angle of the impact on schools and is on how much time and cost would be involved. I understand that Clause 3(4) amends Section 16J of the…

I thank the Minister for her answers. I reassure her that I was not trying to suggest that this is a whole new scale of undertaking for teachers. My noble friend Lady Barran was right: I was trying to understand the scale of it, because this is a big and complex Bill. The Minister was helpful in say…

Lords Debate 20 May 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, the family decision-making groups are extremely important, and we are discovering them rather late in the day. I could have said this on any of the other amendments involving family groups, but this one particularly caught my eye because of the emphasis o…

Lords Debate 20 May 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I speak in support of the purpose clause, in particular, subsection (1)(a) and (c), improving “the safety and wellbeing of children”, and improving “standards”, to “remove barriers to opportunity”. I also refer to my interests in the register. As the Minister will have gathered from…

Lords Debate 1 May 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this important debate. I draw attention to my interests set out in the register. In bringing forward this Bill, the Government should be commended on their many laudable objectives in strengthening the safeguarding of children, removing barriers to opportuniti…