Lords
Committee Stage
14 July 2026
2 contributions
Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2026
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order. We support the continuation of the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board levy for the 2026, 2027 and 2028 levy periods. This provides continuity for the industry without imposing additional costs. As others have said, the levy sys…
Can the noble Baroness address my question about the impact of government policies enacted over the last two years on the engineering construction sector, particularly increased national insurance and employment rights?
Lords
Proceedings
25 June 2026
Unemployment: Autism
My Lords, if reducing unemployment is a serious government priority, the proportion of young autistic people beginning sustained employment must be improved substantially. Can the Minister therefore explain how the Government plan to use their funding and regulatory levers to ensure, first, that col…
Lords
Proceedings
15 April 2026
Southport Inquiry
My Lords, will the Minister say what advice he has given or is planning to give to the Secretary of State for Education about managing the risk that, sadly, some young people present to their peers and to adults? I ask this because I read the Southport report and all the shocking findings it lays ou…
Lords
Debate
25 March 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I am pleased to see that, in Motion K1, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has reduced the issue to being about only Section 31 and that she has provided a carve-out, as it were, for adoption. Imagine if you adopted a two year-old who had been in care and, 10 years later, you have to jump th…
Lords
Debate
18 March 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 424, tabled my noble friend Lady Monckton, and Amendment 426C, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. I have put my name to both amendments. I will be brief.
Despite the careful unpacking in Committee of the human and legal problems that Clause 208 w…
Lords
Debate
3 February 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I want to make just one point, following up on the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. The medical devices exception in the amendment is already provided for. If a more general exception were made for special educational needs—that is…
Lords
Debate
3 February 2026
3 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 198 and will touch on Amendment 230 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Listening to noble Lords around the House, I find it surprising that they consistently believe that inspection, for which I was responsible for seven years, does not place a heavy emphasis on…
Can the noble Baroness say at what point I said that there were schools which did not take children? I do not think I did.
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
2 February 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, the debates today are of tremendous importance and, I think, of comparable difficulty to the painful debate about assisted dying, though that other Bill has rather overshadowed this clause. However, I think, in effect, that what we are talking about here does have some of the characteristi…
Lords
Debate
28 January 2026
4 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 117 in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton, to which I have added my name. Although it may seem a small point, it matters. The draft guidance perfectly illustrates the consequences of poor policy-making: the cart was put before the horse and an announ…
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 121A, relating to local authority consent for the withdrawal of certain children from school, and to Amendment 131A, empowering local authorities to make home visits to children who have ever been subject to a care order or on a child protection plan. Both amendm…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
14 January 2026
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran. We have heard from a number of Members of the House about the changes that this part of the Bill is making. A fundamental rebalancing of responsibilities in social care is being carried through in the pilots. It is pu…
My Lords, I will speak only very briefly. I express my most sincere thanks to the Minister for Amendment 21, concerning an information standard. It directly reflects an amendment that I proposed in Committee, which, in turn, drew on the work of Professor Sir Anthony Finkelstein in his capacity as ad…
Lords
Oral Questions
17 December 2025
Special Educational Needs: Investment
Actually, what happened in the special schools pipeline, as I said, was not the cancellation but a choice that was offered to local authorities over how to proceed with special and AP free schools. In making that decision, local authorities will want to ensure that the needs of parents are met. Thes…
Lords
Oral Questions
17 November 2025
Dyscalculia
I have just faced two questions that suggest I am avoiding the difficulties that might occur with labelling. I fall somewhere between these two points: I think it is important to be able to identify as early as possible children who have difficulties with maths, but it should not be necessary to nam…
Lords
Proceedings
22 October 2025
Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy
My Lords, the White Paper places heavy emphasis on modularity and credit transfer as mechanisms to improve post-16 education. Has the Minister taken full account of the evaluation of the previous attempt, the qualifications and credit framework, brought in in 2008 and scrapped in 2015, and all the l…
Lords
Debate
16 October 2025
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, this comprehensive Bill, so well introduced by my noble friend, brings our treatment of crime up to date to fit new kinds of offences and some hitherto unrecognised. In the time available, as my experience in dealing with crime is limited to my time as a magistrate in the past and my curre…
Lords
Debate
18 September 2025
3 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I oppose Amendments 469 and 470. I recognise that they are proposed with the very best of intentions and at first blush sound wonderful, yet it is blindingly obvious that they would be likely to do more harm than good in practice. They embody a fundamental misconception that children have …
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 502YM. I will echo some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Jackson in relation to his amendment. I believe that my amendment complements the comprehensive final-stage procedure he outlined neatly.
Anyone who works in education knows how problematic d…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
16 September 2025
7 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments to Clause 56 and my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454. I have heard much around the Committee this afternoon that is extremely important, but I think there are some wider points to make.
There are many romantic expectations of schoo…
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YF, proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash, and Amendments 502YV to 502YYA, proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran.
There has long been a lot of discomfort about permanent exclusions. No one likes the idea that there are children who cannot thrive in mai…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
10 September 2025
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I too support the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran. As she and my noble friend Lady Evans have pointed out, it is again not obvious why these powers are needed. The existing legislative framework and funding agreements provide ample levers to enforce and hold academy trus…
My Lords, I want to speak briefly on academy orders and to support Amendments 445B, 446 and 446A. My noble friend Lady Barran rightly said that I did not support the extension of academy orders to those schools that require improvement. I remember writing to the then Secretary of State to warn him t…
Lords
Debate
10 September 2025
6 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Perhaps I could inform my noble friend that the oversight mechanism for ISI was first reduced a good many years ago when DFE asked it to remove the strand that involved monitoring a sample of inspections, and then it subsequently withdrew all the remaining elements. So, there is no longer any oversi…
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendments 428 and 429A to eliminate any potential confusion between two distinct regulatory regimes. I will not repeat what others have said, but I believe that academy funding agreements should continue to be the primary regulatory instrument for t…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
10 September 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I want to speak to this group of amendments on the poorly understood world of unregistered provision, including the types of religious institution that have had a lot of discussion already, as well as looking more broadly. I support two of the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Luca…
Lords
Debate
2 September 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I declare an interest: I am now a member of the Northern Ireland Curriculum Taskforce Advisory Committee. I support amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran, and I support and echo some of the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, my noble friend Lord Young and others…
Lords
Debate
3 July 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I apologise for being a minute or two late arriving in the Chamber. I support Amendments 196 to 199 proposed, respectively, by the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and Amendment 201, from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed. If these are not accepted…
Lords
Debate
23 June 2025
4 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, in the amendments they have proposed. I also agree very much with the comments made by others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who made some important points, especially about the risk of overloadin…
It is perfectly possible for children to log in on different devices. They can log into a social media account and the school can use broader control facilities to ensure that all information is wiped, or all personal details are wiped, at the end of a session. That contains the range of what childr…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
17 June 2025
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
I shall speak to several amendments—to Amendment 170, on a capacity plan, and to Amendment 134B, on planning. I declare my interest as a former Ofsted chief inspector, where I spoke repeatedly over seven years about the issues with sufficiency in many parts of the country, and the urgency of taking …
My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendments 119 to 124 very briefly. We have touched on some very important points, and there is something that still needs to be crystallised. As others have said, these are some of the most troubled children in the system. They are also the ones whose care is prob…
Lords
Debate
12 June 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I support Amendments 134, 143 and 178. Fostering is critical to the provision of good care for all children who need it, and it is a really tough job.
In Committee so far, not very much has been said about the very large proportion of looked-after children who have significant special nee…
Lords
Debate
9 June 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I speak to oppose Amendment 69AB, well-intentioned though it clearly is. I have several levels of concerns about the imposition of yet another duty. I believe that the expectations for looked-after children are generally well understood—whether they are actually carried out in practice is …