Lord Hampton — Hansard — Westminster Brief

Lords Oral Questions 17 December 2025

I am very pleased that the noble Lord is one of the over 2,000 teachers that we have been able to retain in the classroom, despite his busyness in this House as well—I am very glad that the pupils of Mossbourne get the benefit of his teaching. The Opposition’s previous Secretary of State for Educati…

Lords Oral Questions 16 December 2025

Free School Meals

I am sure the noble Lord provided excellent food education for the pupils he was responsible for. The rollout of breakfast clubs started originally with the 750 early adopters. That was precisely about being able to identify, in a range of different schools, how we best delivered and funded breakfas…

Lords Debate 15 December 2025 5 contributions

Crime and Policing Bill

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 337A, in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Spielman and Lady Doocey. As ever, I declare my interest as a state secondary school teacher and as a level 2 ECB cricket coach, which is relevant here. I tried to table a similar amendment to the Children’s…

I am not quite sure that I understood properly. The statutory instrument will allow parents to check whether somebody is on the barred list, but it does not seem to affect the critical bit. People can still work with children or say that they are tutors even though they are on the barred list. Am I …

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Lords Oral Questions 15 December 2025

Technology Adoption Review

The question of digital skills and media literacy is probably most relevant to this area. The noble Lord will have seen that the curriculum and assessment review, which came out recently, has taken into account the need to update our approach to embrace both the risks and the opportunities of the di…

Lords Oral Questions 26 November 2025

Charities: Advancement of Religion

I will feed the noble Lord’s point back to my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern and will be happy to meet the noble Lord to discuss it further.

Lords Debate 19 November 2025 3 contributions

Crime and Policing Bill

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 222 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, which she has so ably explained. All the amendments in this group seem to be a good idea. I also acknowledge the help of the Children’s Commissioner and the children’s coalition. This is a very…

My Lords, I should start by declaring my interest in the register as the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation, which probably these days should have changed its name to the Modern Slavery Foundation, because that is in fact what we are really dealing with. It was the late, great Lord Field o…

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Lords Debate 19 November 2025 3 contributions

Crime and Policing Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 123 says: “Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must launch a consultation”— as a teacher, marking my own homework, I realise that the drafting is then wrong and it should say “on a ban on sharp-tipped knives”. In this, I associate…

My Lords, I will reply quickly to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and also the noble Viscount. I am not against sharp-edged knives. I have a very good knife that cuts through a Savoy cabbage and does a great job with everything I need in the kitchen. It is just rounded at the edge, so I cannot stab…

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Lords Oral Questions 17 November 2025

Dyscalculia

The noble Lord makes a very important point about how we need to support the workforce in schools to meet the needs of children. These children deserve cutting-edge pedagogy that is rooted in evidence. That is why, for example, we introduced a new national professional qualification for SENCOs in 20…

Lords Debate 10 November 2025

Crime and Policing Bill

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 27 to 31. I declare my interest as a secondary school teacher. These amendments from the Victims’ Commissioner have been ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Russell of Liverpool, so the Committee does not need to hear much from me. We are told that d…

Lords Debate 28 October 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Fox, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, on the progress he has made on a very valid point he raised earlier in these debates. I also say to my noble friend Lord Parkinson and the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner: my goodness, they must be chuff-chuffed …

Lords Proceedings 22 October 2025

Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy

My Lords, I declare an interest as a working teacher. I very much welcome this wonderfully optimistic White Paper and its positively Churchillian language. At one point, it says that “we are improving careers advice in schools … and introducing 2 weeks’ worth of work experience throughout a young p…

Lords Debate 22 October 2025 2 contributions

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 62 in the names of my noble friend Lady Boycott—who sends her apologies; she has been unavoidably detained—and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. This amendment, which is very similar to one tabled in Committee, would mean that the mandatory traini…

My Lords, I have learned a lot during the past 15 minutes, some of which I have immediately forgotten. I particularly enjoyed the exposition from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—his stream-of-consciousness, mushroom, anti-Australian cuisine comment —which will live with me for a long time. I know t…

Lords Debate 16 October 2025

Crime and Policing Bill

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, to the Front Bench to supplement the efforts of the indefatigable Home Office team on the Front Bench in the Lords. I wish to speak about Clause 191, which decriminalises abortions for women ending their pregnancy at any stage to birth. The claus…

Lords Debate 13 October 2025 2 contributions

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I was depressed by the remarks of the Minister, but I have been depressed further into almost silence by the astonishing remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. The complacency they both show on these two really important issues is staggering. Since we last debated this, there has be…

My Lords, I have listened to what the Minister said. I am hopeful that safety will be at the top of this Bill, or at least in the Government’s mind. Therefore, I am minded not to move my Motion 30A.

Lords Debate 18 September 2025 3 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I am standing up to make a speech absolutely on the fly now. I have taken some legal advice and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, says there would be no adverse impact from this. So I add my support to Amendments 469, 470 and 502F. As a teacher, I think the history of education in this country …

My Lords, I rise to speak as a design technology teacher, a veteran of the IfATE Act, an officer of the APPG on apprenticeships and a member of the House of Lords Social Mobility Policy Committee. I think we all agree that apprenticeships are vital to this country. It is rather sad that this subjec…

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Lords Debate 16 September 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran: head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend where necessary. I would like to pass on the experience of a head teacher who told me recently that he had had to permanently exclude two pupils wh…

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 463, to which I added my name. Government data shows that 16 to 19 year-olds experience the highest rates of domestic abuse of any age group. Without mandatory RSE, we are leaving many 16 to 18 year-olds unsupported, just as they are starting their first intima…

Lords Debate 10 September 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of Amendment 448A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to which I have added my name. I must declare an interest in that I have been a member of teaching unions, but somewhere along the line, I let that slip. I …

Lords Debate 10 September 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, as a secondary school teacher, I admit that I am conflicted by this group of amendments. Noble Lords have highlighted the benefits of getting industry experts to teach in schools. At our school, we use architects to teach the architecture programme. I recently went to a UTC that gets emplo…

My Lords, as a teacher at Mossbourne, who has one child there and one who has just left, I—slightly emotionally—thank the noble Lord, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead. I cannot thank him and the Hackney Learning Trust enough. I cannot add anything to that except to quote the chair of a multi-academy trust…

Lords Debate 2 September 2025 2 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I will speak to the rather dramatically numbered Amendment 333ZA in my name and belatedly declare an interest as a state secondary school teacher. In the past I also worked as a private cricket coach, which is quite relevant here. I acknowledge the help of Edapt in this amendment and in br…

My Lords, I thank the Minister for those slightly more reassuring words, but the fact that it was news to all of us just shows how much work still has to be done. We will wait and see on this one, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Lords Debate 2 September 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I was going to rise very briefly to speak to Amendments 243, 249 and 260 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to which I added my name, but the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, has put it far better than I possibly could. I was going to talk about concerns about the home-schooling…

Lords Debate 3 July 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 196 and 197 and declare, as ever, that I am a teacher at a state academy in east London. Before I talk to these amendments, I want to rather cheekily add a little thing. Given that the Minister kindly committed to getting the Keeping Children Safe in Educati…

Lords Debate 23 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 458 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and my noble friend Lady Kidron. I have spoken on this issue several times in your Lordships’ House, and I will not repeat those speeches here. I am a teacher and have taught for 10 years, but never in a scho…

Lords Debate 19 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 163, tabled by my noble friend Lord Bird, to which I added my name. One of the advantages of membership of this House is the free subscription to the New Statesman , which recently devoted a whole issue to Britain’s child poverty epidemic. From it, I will quote…

Lords Debate 17 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 165. In the spirit of brevity pioneered by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I also support Amendment 118 in his name and Amendment 144 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Russell of Liverpool. As a teacher, I can only quote the noble…

Lords Debate 12 June 2025 3 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I support Amendment 79 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. Following the statistical barrage from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, I shall give some more. According to the Drive Forward Foundation, children in car…

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 164 in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and my noble friend Lord Russell of Liverpool. I omitted to declare my interests as a teacher and a kinship carer, but your Lordships probably know of those by now.

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