Damian Hinds MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister may be about to come to this, but what will be the relationship between LSIPs, and whatever strategies they draw up, and Skills England?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Fortuitously, Ms Furniss, we do now have an opportunity to ask about something in the letter, which the Minister is going through now. I am struggling a bit with this thing about, “If the Secretary of State deems it appropriate.” That is not because I question that judgment, but because I do not really understand what the intent is. What does the Minister believe will be the practical change that comes about as a result? For example, is it about more new qualifications coming in? Is it changing the balance between T-levels and other TVET qualifications?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In encouraging the Minister to write to him about the effect of the level 6 and level 7 restrictions, will my hon. Friend also ask her to comment on the potential effect of those restrictions on schools—the sector for which the DFE is responsible—and in particular on the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak in favour of the new clause in the name of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. He is right; of course, we have just voted on something quite similar, and that vote was lost by the classic 11 to four margin, with which we have become familiar. But that does not mean the Government cannot do this, and indeed there have been some signs and indications that they might make Skills England a fully independent body on a statutory footing. Most people talk about Skills England in their speeches, but that is not what the Bill, as introduced, does; it abolishes something without actually creating something else, and hands the powers to the Secretary of State, in whose gift it is to hand on. There was also the question that came up last Thursday about Ofqual, and what the Bill does to that, which I do not think we were 100% clear about. I think the Minister was going to write, but I do not think I have seen that letter—that is not to say it has not come, or been sent, but I am wondering if when the Minister comes to speak, if she could confirm whether that letter has come. There have always been two fundamental questions about the Bill and the creation of Skills England: the first is about independence, and the second is about who should set the expectations and standards for various occupations—should it be the employers in those organisations or somebody else? There is also a third point, which is relevant to independence, about the heft of this body, putting skills right at the heart of cross-departmental work, and what statutory independence would do to the status of this body. Particularly in education and training, one of the reasons that we have independent bodies is so that everybody knows that the standards are robust, they cannot be subject to political pressure, and there cannot be a temptation to make it a bit easier to get over a hurdle to make the numbers look better. We have had that system of independence for a very long time, and do to this day, and still will in the future for academic qualifications. As I said the other day, I think independence of this body is important to underpinning parity of esteem. IfATE is legally established as a non-departmental public body, whereas Skills England will be, as things stand, an executive agency. As a non-departmental public body, IfATE does therefore have some independence from the Department for Education because its functions and responsibilities are set out in legislation approved by this Parliament, whereas Skills England, as things stand, will simply be an integral part or unit within DFE. When Skills England was first talked about in the King’s Speech, it seemed that it would be established as an independent body. As well as my question on Ofqual, the first of my other questions to the Minister is, what has changed? If that was the intent—perhaps we have all just misread the text—what is different now, that it should not be? Finally, if it is right for the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council to be put on a statutory footing, why is it not for Skills England?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Hear, hear.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Down’s Syndrome · Hansard source

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  It truly is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Turner, and it truly is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft)—I do not know if I can. There are times in this place when it is a real privilege to have heard from a colleague, particularly when they share something very personal that helps to inform our democracy, and she has just done that many times over, and I thank her. Indeed, I am sure we all thank her very much for it. I also thank and commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) for securing this important debate. As the hon. Lady said, we are coming up to World Down Syndrome Day. It is already Down’s Syndrome Awareness Week, so it is particularly apt that we should be having this debate. It is my honour to co-chair, with the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper), the all-party parliamentary group on down syndrome. Down syndrome was not something I knew a lot about beforehand; it just so happens that the co-founders of the National Down Syndrome Policy Group, Ken and Rachael Ross, happened to be constituents of mine. But my God, through that link I have come into contact with the community that the hon. Member for Thurrock was just talking about, which is the most enormously wonderful thing. We had an event a couple of weeks ago over in Portcullis House. There was a flash mob in Portcullis House, there was dancing and there was singing, but there were also challenging speeches from members of the Down syndrome community, who it is always important to hear from directly. In the APPG, we have heard a number of testimonies about people’s frustration with the education system. I am pleased that Down syndrome is now included as a category in the school census, which means that it is possible to take a more targeted approach, but those issues carry on into employment, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness said. There is so much work to be done, but the Down Syndrome Act 2022, which was carried through by Sir Liam Fox, was a really important milestone and a really important achievement to build on. I do not really have time to say it all, so I will just very quickly commend Sir Liam again for the work he did then and for his continued advocacy today. I also want to recognise the work of Ken and Rachael and everything they did to support the Act through Parliament, and everything they have done since. That includes their work locally with Portsmouth hospitals on a Down-specific maternity pathway, which I know as a constituency MP; in a completely different way, their work with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to make sure that the voices of people with Down syndrome are heard in mainstream films; and also their work on special schools and making sure that more children with Down syndrome can be in a mainstream setting when that is right for them. I also want to recognise the work of all the MPs involved, including the Minister, who was on the Bill Committee with Sir Liam Fox to consider his private Member’s Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness said, it is now several years since that Bill was enacted. It is really important that we press on with the guidance and that it is specifically about Down syndrome. That is not in any way to reduce the issues faced by people with a broader set of learning difficulties or disabilities, but this is specifically the Down Syndrome Act 2022, to look at those particular issues and challenges. We need that ministerial cross-departmental taskforce, to make sure that the guidance is as sound as it can be and is produced as quickly as it can be. I also thank the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Care, the hon. Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), for his continued engagement. We continue to extend an invitation to him, and to the Minister, to join us in the APPG when they can, to hear further from members of the community about how important all this work is to them.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals · Hansard source

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  It is wonderful to see you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate warmly the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis), and I commend everyone who has taken part in the debate, including the hon. Members for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), for Redditch (Chris Bloore), for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), for Winchester (Dr Chambers), for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) and for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). Of course, I also commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Today is a big day for him, because it is the day that Parliament will finally debate whether St Patrick’s day should become a UK-wide public holiday. We are doubly grateful to him for joining us this morning ahead of that moment. This is a very important debate on a very important subject. Nutrition for children is clearly fundamental, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for Strangford talked us through. Later today, colleagues will have a chance to discuss the welfare system overall—what it is designed to do and what it does well. We should note that free school meals, in economist speak, are a particularly efficient benefit, because they are a benefit in kind. They go directly to people with a demonstrable need and provide a direct benefit, which helps them in their schooling. I was proud that the last Government extended free school meal eligibility more than any previous Government. We took spending to over £1 billion a year to deliver, by the end of our time in government, free lunches to the greatest ever proportion of children—over a third, compared with one in six in 2010—despite unemployment coming down by 1 million, 600,000 fewer children growing up in workless households and the proportion of people in work but on low pay halving as a result of the national living wage. By the end of our time in government, more than 2 million pupils were eligible for benefits- related free school meals, a further 1.3 million infants in years R, 1 and 2 were eligible for universal infant free school meals, which were introduced in 2014, and 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education were eligible for free meals. With any benefit or programme as important as this, of course there will always be things that we need to keep under review and update, and there are always issues. I think there are eight principal issues, which I hope the Minister will speak to; most of them have been covered by colleagues in the debate. The first is the per-meal funding rate of £2.58, which clearly needs reviewing over time, particularly in the light of the Budget changes, including measures such as the increase in national insurance contributions, which have raised costs. Colleagues have talked about the quality of school meals, and it is right that standards are kept under review. Indeed, the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for School Standards, committed in this place on 7 May last year that Labour in government would look again at the guidance on school food standards. There have been calls—we heard them again today from the hon. Member for Twickenham—to change the £7,400 threshold. I should be clear that that is earned income, not total household income. Again, in this place on 7 May last year, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), a distinguished Labour MP who is now a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, asked about that. There have also been calls to make school meals year-round—the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby mentioned that—and to copy the example of London by making all primary school pupils eligible for free school meals. Indeed, I believe that the Minister said at the Labour party conference in September that the Government and his party were looking carefully at the London example to see what could be learned and derived from it. There is also the question of children who are educated otherwise than at school, which we have debated in Westminster Hall, including with the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby—it may have been the last time, or almost the last time, that I was sitting on the Government Benches. On that occasion, we made it clear that we would put into the guidance the eligibility and the reasonable adjustments requirements. It would be good to hear how that is working operationally. There is a good case for auto-enrolment. Some local authorities are running pilots; the Government should learn from that and seek to implement auto-enrolment. Historically, it has been hard to do, because of legal reasons and systems issues. The systems issues have ended, because technology has moved on, and a legal basis can be found, so I hope the Minister will be able to move forward with that. Finally, on the question of eligibility, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate mentioned the transitional protections under universal credit. There was a campaign in 2018—let us euphemistically call it a creative deployment of the truth—that suggested that the then Government were about to remove free school meals eligibility from hundreds of thousands of children. I remember it well, because I was a Minister at the time. It was not true; in fact, what has happened with universal credit transitional protections is that many more children have become eligible for free school meals. In fact, that is a major reason why one in three children is now eligible for free school meals. The big question for the Government is this: will they take steps to keep the number of children eligible for free school meals at roughly a third of children? Perhaps the Minister can say a little more about how they will do that. Beyond lunch, there are other aspects of meals at schools. In addition to the school fruit and vegetable scheme, there is also the holiday activities and food programme, which often takes place in schools and which the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby mentioned. We are proud to introduce that programme, which will be backed by over £200 million of funding and eventually extended to all 153 local authorities in England. Then, of course, there is breakfast. We introduced the national school breakfast programme in 2018. Although Ministers often talk about school breakfast provision as if it was a new idea, by the end of our time in government, 2,694 schools were involved in the national school breakfast programme, serving about 350,000 pupils. It was targeted, including by area deprivation, and eligibility was on a whole-school basis. The formula gave a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs. Crucially, programme remains available to this day to eligible secondary schools, as well as primary schools. We worry a lot these days, rightly, about school attendance. Breakfast provision has a bigger effect on school attendance in secondary schools than it does in primary schools. I think the Government have confirmed that they are retaining indefinitely the national school breakfast programme for secondary schools. It would be helpful to hear the Minister confirm whether that means that at least the current level of support will be retained. There are many more breakfast clubs than those in the national school breakfast programme. Some have a modest charge; some have a universal element—for example, every child can have a bowl of porridge, but other things are available. Some schemes use the pupil premium to subsidise it. Of course, just as with any wraparound provision, if a pupil being at breakfast helps to support a parent to go to work, typically the parent would be eligible for reimbursement of up to 85% of any costs through their universal credit payment. On 24 February, the Secretary of State for Education said in the main Chamber that one in seven children in the pilot schemes has no current before-school provision. By my basic maths, that means that six in seven of those children do, so breakfast clubs in schools are quite widespread. The Government say that the current programme is a pilot. Given that there are thousands and thousands of breakfast clubs in schools across the country, some of us were wondering what they were piloting—perhaps it was the angle of pour of the cornflakes, or some other difficult, technical detail. It seems that they might be trying to pilot how little they can get away with. The Government like to say to parents that they will save them £450 a year through breakfast clubs. Now, £450 per year divided by 190 school days—can anyone do that live?—is £2.37 a day. There are one-off costs being provided for schools—£500 plus £1,099—but the per pupil rate is as little as 60p per day, although it is a little higher for pupil premium pupils. I would say that there is a big old gap between the 60p a day that the Government will give to schools and the £2.37 that they say they will save for parents, and I would like to know how they expect schools to make up that gap. I have no doubt that the Minister will say, “Ah, but it’s only a pilot,” but will he commit to increase the rate if it turns out to be too little to cover schools’ real costs?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Intervene and tell us!

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is certainly right that over the years, there have been many brilliant, far-sighted people in the Labour party who have overlooked their political tradition and said, “We must just do what is best for the children.” I do not think there has ever been a universally accepted consensus on academies; until very recently, there have been groups actively organising against schools becoming academies, with leading members of the Labour party involved in those movements. There has always been a strand, which turns out to be wider than we realised, of the Labour party that believes that unless there is control from the top, through councils, and unless schools are told what to do, the system is inconsistent. Some consistency in education is very important, but that is not the same as uniformity, and certainly not the same as top-down control. It turns out that Government Ministers do not want transparency and choice. They do not want diversity. In particular, they seem to want to curtail the improvement in school performance that has been made possible through academy trusts. The Government have already stopped new free schools. This Bill can not only stop academies growing in size, but can stop them staying the same size, even if they are popular with parents. We all know that the Bill erodes freedoms, starting with the qualified teacher status requirement. It is not as if schools are going around willy-nilly, recruiting people without qualifications off the streets. They are not putting cards up in Tesco saying, “Apply now to teach, no prior experience or qualifications required”—of course they are not. Equally, though, a headteacher who is trying to do the best for his or her school and its children might have a reason to bring in somebody from a profession. They might want to bring in somebody with a sports background, somebody from the private sector, or somebody from another country to help with their school’s language programme, but no, we do not trust headteachers to make those decisions. We have to write something into legislation to stop them doing that. Turning to the national curriculum, again, it is not as if schools are going around willy-nilly saying, “We’re not going to teach children English, maths, geography and history. We’re just going to make it all up.” In fact, Ofsted-inspected schools—which all state schools are—cannot do that, because they are judged on having a broad and balanced curriculum. The quickest way to achieve that is to follow the national curriculum, but there are schools that want to innovate and to deviate somewhat from the national curriculum. We see no harm in that, so long as those schools maintain that breadth and balance. It has been said by a few colleagues that it seems to put the cart before the horse to say that all schools must follow the national curriculum rigidly before we have the outcome of the review. Just a few hours ago, we had a publication connected to the review, but not the final report. It is beside the point, however, because whatever the review comes up with—on which we must wait and see—the Government are not obliged to adopt it and could adopt something else. Even if they do adopt it, this Government or any subsequent Government could decide to do something different. Having the ability for schools to deviate somewhat gives us a safety valve against the over-politicisation of schools and what is taught in the curriculum. It also gives some reassurance to faith schools and parents.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Carry on, then!

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to be called to speak in the debate. It has been an honour to be a member of the Bill Committee. Over many days, we considered the Bill in detail, providing line-by-line scrutiny. Today, there are many amendments before us, many of which I support, and there are important issues to discuss, including elective home education. My right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) made some excellent points, and the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) also made important points. It is important that we discuss the breakfast club provision. In principle, schools providing breakfast to children is a good thing—why not?—but as we get closer to implementation, colleagues on the Labour Benches may find themselves getting more mail from headteachers in their constituencies, noting that the Government say that the pilot scheme will save parents £450 per child, but the amount of money that the Government are giving to schools goes down as low as £114 per child. That is clearly quite a gap for schools to make up, and we will see how they intend to do that. We had some good debates on uniform in Committee. I gently say to Labour colleagues that if they think the changes in uniform will automatically result in the cost of sending children to school going down—because everybody will go to Asda and get unbranded clothing, so there will be no pester power or fashion competitions when it comes to sportswear, for example—next time they do a school visit, they should go to a PE lesson and look down at the children’s feet. If they cannot make it to a PE lesson, just wait for the end of the school day, stay at the school gate and look at the children’s bags. It is not automatically the case that not having uniform items for sport, for example, makes things cheaper. I also hope that at some point during the passage of this legislation, the Government will get rid of the bizarre anomaly by which they say it is all right to have a school tie as an additional logoed or branded item in a secondary school, but not in a primary school, for some reason. There are also important new clauses for us to consider—on free school meal auto-enrolment, for example. We had that discussion this morning in Westminster Hall with the Minister for early education, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). Historically, there have been barriers to auto-enrolment for free school meals to do with IT systems and the legal basis for such a measure. The IT system issues are melting away as technology improves, and I hope that the Government will look at that seriously. If I were to comment on every clause with which I have an issue, or every amendment on which I have an opinion, I would stretch even your famed patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. Instead, I propose taking a step back. What we are debating is more than just the 84 pages of parts 2 and 3 of the Bill, or the 62 pages of amendments. This is really about the soul and direction of education in England. As other colleagues have mentioned, this new Government have a very solid base on which to build when it comes to attainment in England; we have the best primary school readers in the western world—yes, that bears repeating. Under the last Government, at secondary school, we went from 27th to 11th in mathematics, and from 25th to 13th in reading. Children on free school meals became 50% more likely to go to university. That is the record of the last 14 years. It is not the record of the 13 years before that, when we went down the international comparison tables. There were stand-out reformers in new Labour, and I pay tribute to them, starting with Sir Tony Blair and his famous epizeuxis, “Education, education, education.” There was also the noble Lord Blunkett, Lord Adonis and others, but they were always swimming against the tide from the left of politics and the Labour party to push through reforms. We should not exaggerate how much was achieved by the end of the last Labour Government. There were a couple of hundred academies, as opposed to many thousands today. What happened between 2010 and 2024 was not all about academies—far from it. It was really about brilliant teachers—that is always where it starts and finishes in education—in an ecosystem that valued high standards and high quality. Crucially, it was about the combination of autonomy and accountability for schools, a knowledge-rich curriculum, and proven methods, such as synthetic phonics and maths mastery. It was about schools learning from each other, both in the hub-and-spoke network across the country and in academy trusts, which became the primary vehicle for school improvement. That improvement also needed diversity and parental choice, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, who is on my left—spatially—pointed out. That starts with clear information and knowing how children are doing at school. There was a time, for many decades in this country—going back way before the new Labour reforms, by the way—when nobody knew how many children were just being let down by schools. We took that provision of clear information further, of course—as did the Blair reforms—with clear Ofsted judgments that anybody could access readily, but also much longer judgments that could be read by anybody who could read. We do not talk nearly enough about Progress 8—it is so much better than the measures that we used to have—either on raw GCSE attainment or the contextual value-added measures of the Labour years. We also knew that if we were to have choice, there needed to be spare capacity in the system. Remarkably, in spite of the fact that there was a known demographic need, in the years up to 2010, the previous Labour Government cut school places by a six-figure number; we added 1.2 million more. We also made the diversity of academies and free schools happen, and welcomed it.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member mentions answers to written parliamentary questions. Would she have been as surprised as I was to see the answer to a written PQ of mine saying that if a school specified that a badge be sewed on to an otherwise generic blazer, that badge would count as an item of branded uniform?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I do, and my right hon. Friend gives me two valuable opportunities. The first is to pay tribute to the great Tim Leunig. We do not often talk about him in this House. He has friends here, and he is a perceptive thinker. I will look up his article. The other opportunity that my right hon. Friend gives me is to highlight the discrepancy we can get when things appear to be getting better, when in fact they are not. That is what happened under the last Labour Government when, in spite of us falling down the international comparisons, they managed to find 11 different ways in the system to make it look like our GCSE results were improving year after year. We do not want that to happen again. There were those champions in the new Labour years who made these great reforms happen and would want to continue them now, so I say to those on the Government Benches: where are the champions today? Where are those in the modern Labour party who will say, “No, we will not be bound by ideology. We are going to do what is in the best interests of the children”? I hope there will be some of those champions in the other place. To be fair, I was mildly encouraged this morning to hear the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, when questioned on the radio about the fate of this Bill, appearing to be somewhat open-minded, shall we say, about what might happen. To be fair, I have even been slightly encouraged listening to the Secretary of State for Education in recent days and weeks. She has sounded like she might be a little bit open to rowing back from some of the worst excesses of this legislation. There is still time. There will be weeks of this legislation being considered in the other place, so I just ask the Government to please take that time to think carefully about the legacy they will be leaving and to turn those words into deeds.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend and near constituency neighbour makes a very important point, and I am sure she is running a very effective campaign. We look to the Government to come forward with what we know will be a large and broad special educational needs reform package. We do not yet know what will be in it or what the implications will be. Of course, we want all children to be wherever is right for them. For some children, that means being educated in a mainstream setting where they can benefit from that. However, we also know that for some children, it is right to be in special school. Having the full range of provision is therefore incredibly important. There is a great deal in this Bill that I could speak about, and which we did speak about in Committee. However, in pursuit of brevity—as I know you would wish, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am going to limit myself today to talking about two aspects: one thing that is in the Bill, and another that is conspicuous by its absence. The thing that is in the Bill is a peculiar thing to raise on the Floor of the House of Commons, because it is something with which I have not yet heard anybody disagree, and on which there is no amendment to speak to —although, to remain orderly, Madam Deputy Speaker, I can speak with reference to Government amendment 114, which is right next to it in the legislation. I speak neither in favour nor against the principle of what I am about to cover, but raise it for what is, I think, an important reason. In this House, it is sometimes precisely with measures on which there is no disagreement that the greatest dangers lie, because this House, with its oppositional layout, thrives on people finding holes in what is being proposed and objecting to them; when everybody is saying the same kind of thing, there is a real danger that things will get through without the proper attention. I have not yet said what I am referring to, have I? I am referring to the provisions on unique identifiers. A couple of speakers have already mentioned the importance of these measures. The hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) was talking about a number of almost invariably serious case reviews identifying the problems that have occurred. A lot of that centres around the lack of proper data sharing, where different agencies both knew the same child, but did not join together what they knew about that child in order to be able to act in their best interest. Having what is, in the systems world, called an “index term”—a terrible way to refer to a child—or a unique identifier for every child, so that everybody knows when they are talking about the same child, is very important. The Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) spoke about the potential for this area to be genuinely transformational— I think that was the phrase she used. All of that is true. Clause 4 allows for the creation of a single unique identifier for children and introduces new duties around data sharing. Here is my worry: sometimes when we legislate, something passes through without too much debate, and then, two or three years later, all sorts of other things start happening, and when we query why they are happening, people say, “Well, you lot voted for this. You passed a law about it. Perhaps these are some of the consequences.” I think something along those lines might have happened with GDPR, for example, and some of the things that we now see coming through on rules around children’s social media use and ages. The creation of the single unique identifier is a massive change in the way we keep records on people in this country. With the potential to join up different databases, there are great positive implications for things like child safety, but there are other implications around privacy, data security and so on. It has been suggested that the NHS number would be the unique identifier used for each child, which, at first glance, seems an obvious and sensible thing to do. As a former Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will know that in the past, various projects have proposed using the national insurance number as a unique identifier for adults, which, at the time, also seemed like a sensible and clever thing to do. However, when it was prodded further, it turned out that the national insurance number database is not perfect, and I am afraid the NHS number database may not be, either—it just was not designed for this kind of purpose. We are obviously not going to have a big debate on this issue today, although they may do in the other place when they talk about the Bill. However, over time, I think we will have to unpack what this whole new system may imply. For a start, is it talking about using the existing NHS database and the index term—the unique identifier for individuals—or is it talking about taking those numbers and putting them into a new database or system, which would have significant cost and time implications? If it is using the current NHS database, we need to think about the implications. There has been a different debate going on about AI and the use of large amounts of data for academic research. What would be the implications of having this huge database with every child in the country potentially linked to all sorts of other databases, with details about them, for that kind of research? How secure would the system be? We can probably safely say that the system would not give the same number to two different children, but I am not 100% certain that we could say with total confidence that the same one child could not, at different times in their life, have different numbers, particularly with immigration and re-immigration, change in family structures and so on. What would that mean for the system? More broadly, though, once we had this unique identifier and a national database of this sort, we could use it for quite a few things other than child protection. Some of those things might be considered by many of us in this House to be pro-social things that are worth pursuing. We have been having debates about age verification and the use of electronic devices and social media, for example; such a database would probably be the most reliable identity system for under-18s. What about after age 18? If children have grown up with this database and with a number and identifier attached to them, that would not disappear just because they pass the age of majority. In theory, they could carry on having a linked database that potentially links up child protection sources, NHS sources, police national computer and so on—who knows what else could be joined up. We might then find that we have a system of national identity cards without having sought that in the first place.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not know if the hon. Member has been reading misquotes.com again, but I did not say what he just suggested. I think he is probably referring to an interview from years ago in which I said that it has become something of a rite of passage that, between years 6 and 7, the great majority of children are given a mobile phone. That is true, and it is not at all what he just said that I said.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes a powerful point very effectively. There will always be arguments about needing exceptions for this case and that, but we can have exceptions, and school headteachers are pretty good at knowing when they need to make an exception to a rule. It would be helpful to have a national policy in this area. That would not preclude exceptions for children with a special educational need or young carers. Crucially, it would also not preclude children from having a phone as they go to and from school, where the school and the parents want that. Parents often think about that, for safety reasons. There are various ways of dealing with this, such as the pouches that the hon. Member mentioned, or lockers. I have noticed a shift. A couple of years ago, some people argued against a ban on principle. Now, the only real argument that I hear—I do not say that this is a trivial point—is about the big cost of buying pouches or lockers. If that is what we are arguing about, that is material progress. It is time for us to stop talking about whether, and to start talking about how.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker; indeed we are. In fairness to the hon. Lady, there is a connection, but it is important to say that we did not say no to a ban in 2024. We said that we would start with non-statutory guidance, with the option to make that guidance statutory. Yes, children’s usage of mobile phones has continued. People say, “Phones are banned in all schools anyway.” That is true, and I doubt there is a school in the whole country that says, “Yeah, it’s okay, just whip out your phone in the middle of an English lesson.” Everybody has various restrictions. However, if we look at the survey data, we see that there is a bit of a hierarchy; we can listen to Ministers, headteachers, classroom teachers or kids. The further down that list we go, the more we hear people saying, “Phones are about, particularly in breaks and at lunch time.” That, to me, is part of the school day; this is not just about lesson time.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to join in this important debate, as it has been to serve on the Bill Committee. I am very pleased that we have two days to debate the Bill on Report, because really it is two Bills, which are very different in character. In part 1, which we are debating today, there is a great deal on which I think all of us in the House agree. In fact, quite large parts of it were in the previous Government’s published Bill. It contains some important provisions covering children in care, special educational needs, child protection and so on.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  As ever, my right hon. Friend makes a compelling point. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be pleased to know that I am coming to a close.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  No, it was not posturing then and it is not posturing now. We issued non-statutory guidance—

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member clearly did not consult the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne), because he has made a slightly contradictory point. I was coming on to say that we did issue non-statutory guidance that mobile phones should be prohibited during school. That was the right thing to do. I do not know if this is further down whatever webpage the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) was looking at, but I said that we maintained the option of making that guidance statutory. That time has come to do that, because the guidance has not been sufficiently effective in its current form, but issuing the guidance was the right thing to do.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  With respect, there are different levels. There is non-statutory guidance, statutory guidance and primary legislation. I first had to deal with this question in 2019. On that occasion, we decided not to issue a ban. We had a big discussion about it in a legislative Committee. I am not totally sure that it was the right approach to take at the time, but it seemed to be the view of headteachers in particular that there should be no ban. The hon. Member is right that when I was back in the Department for Education, we introduced non-statutory guidance, and I believe that the time has come to write that guidance into legislation. If he will give me a chance, I will say why. Even if something should be banned, it is perfectly legitimate to ask: why not just let schools decide? Schools know their pupils better. I have made that argument myself many times over the years on many different things. Both the Labour party and the Conservatives find ourselves in the exceptionalism territory. Labour Members of Parliament say, “Don’t tell schools what to do. Leave it up to individual headteachers.” Have they read the rest of the Bill? It prescribes what schools must do in the most extraordinary detail. It takes away academy freedoms, specifies the exact length of breakfast, and says, “You may not have more than four items of branded school uniform. For secondary schools, that includes a tie. Primary schools may not have a tie.” It includes all manner of detailed specifications, except on this one issue. To give the mirror image, it is true that we believe, in general, that we should leave things entirely up to schools, who know their children best, but this should be an exception. As that hon. Gentleman was just saying— [ Interruption. ] I was not being rude; I meant the hon. Member for Basingstoke, as opposed to this one, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford. In 2019, we decided not to issue that guidance, but in 2024 we did. It was clear at the time that there was an option to make the guidance statutory, if required. Since then, the world has kept on changing. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) talked about the continued development, tragically, of mental ill health among children and young people. We had this debate when discussing a private Member’s Bill a couple of Fridays ago. Proving causality perfectly is incredibly difficult—we will probably never be able to do it. However, I do not know about colleagues, but I do not meet many people, particularly not teachers, who seriously doubt that there is a major causal link between the two things.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Gentleman will find that what the Government committed to do was some research.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Lady was here for the first two or three minutes of my speech—that is broadly what I said. In fact, I quoted her talking about the transformational potential of this measure and its importance. I do not want to go through it all again, but I said that when we all agree on something, there is sometimes a danger of unintended consequences. I then said that we may not talk about all this today—we do not have to do so today—but I think the Government will probably have to come back multiple times for Parliament to be able to consider all the much wider potential implications of creating such a database. I think, not for the first time in our in our lives, we are not a million miles away from one another. The other thing that I want to talk about, in a less consensual tone, is what is glaring in its absence from the Bill: new clause 36 on mobile phones and social media, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott). There are four parts to it: the first two state that the chief medical officer should be commissioned to issue a report, and the Government will conduct research on the effects of social media on children and young people. That was in the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), which we discussed a couple of Fridays ago. The third thing was in the wider package, as colleagues will remember, but the Government did not agree to it: a phone ban during the school day. That is point of contention, although I know that many hon. Members across the House, including in the Labour party, agree on it. There are limits to the approach. An argument that is always made when asking, “Why not ban mobile phones at school?” is, “What about out of school?” That is a good question, but it is not a reason not to do the first part. I readily admit that most online harm happens outside school. We know from research, including the recent study from the University of Birmingham, that a school ban does not necessarily reduce the total amount of time that young people spend online—it just displaces some of it. That does not necessarily improve things such as sleep, which is a big worry for teenagers, nor does it address wider issues of attention span, eyesight and so on. Rules are still important, for the sake of both children and schools, but three things in recent years have changed the context for behaviour in schools. The first is a set of things that happened around covid—a sort of attitude shift that seems to have happened to a large extent throughout society. The other two things are vapes and phones. Of course, there is a universal ban on vapes at school. That does not mean that they never get through, but pupils are not allowed to vape in any state secondary school in this country. Phones are the other thing. We know—I say that because it applies to us as well—that if we have a phone in our pocket, even if we are not looking at the screen in front of us, it is still something of a distraction, because it could buzz at any time. In fact, we might be wondering if it will buzz when someone replies or comments on a post or whatever it might be. The school day in its entirety should be devoted to school. That means not just lessons and learning things, although that is the primary aim, but being a child or young person, being with friends and growing up without those distractions.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. If we take the full etymology, we can go back a lot further, to the creation of guilds centuries ago, which evolved into the modern system.