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Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, and particularly Amendment 209, in the names of my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes and other noble Lords who have added their names.

I have a granddaughter, now aged 10, who from birth has been allergic to dairy, eggs and nuts. Through a lengthy medically managed programme she has been able to reduce substantially her reaction to dairy and eggs, but remains extremely vulnerable to peanuts and sesame. She carries an EpiPen, although mercifully she has not yet had cause to use it. These allergies remain a constant concern to her and her parents. Yet I regard her as being one of the fortunate ones. She is conscientious and very aware of what she can and cannot eat, but the inherent risks are heightened away from home, whenever, say, she is at a friend’s house or in a restaurant. Most importantly, she attends a school which has adopted and follows the policies and procedures stipulated by Amendment 209.

I regard these as minimum standards to be followed by schools. They surely should be regarded as best practice. However, it appears that, despite allergy being the most chronic childhood condition in the UK, my granddaughter’s school is in the minority in specifying these protections and our legislation lags behind global comparators. This cannot be right. During term time, children spend most of their waking hours at school. Schools act in loco parentis, with all the legal duties of care that that entails, but current statutory medical guidance, as we have heard, is not specific to allergies. It is vague and open to interpretation. It has created a worrying gap in allergy safeguard provision. Even were this adapted specifically to address allergies, it would remain just guidance. Unless the Minister can assure us otherwise, it would not be mandatory and it is unlikely to be comprehensive, so it would not achieve the step change required. The adoption of Amendment 209, on the other hand, would go a long way towards filling this gap.

I am also fully supportive of Amendments 210, 212, 213 and 214 in the name, principally, of the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. Amendments 210 and 212 in particular would ensure that external providers, including catering providers, follow a school’s allergy and anaphylaxis policy. If we are sensibly to mandate schools to have such a policy, for compliance with which they will be held responsible, we should give them the tools to enforce that policy.

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It is especially in the provision of catering services where schools will feel most at risk if they cannot stipulate suppliers’ quality thresholds. Those in the supply chain are accustomed to being contractually bound to act in accordance with their clients’ required standards in all sorts of areas, for example living wage and modern slavery compliance, so there is no bar in principle to allergy policy being added to the list. There must be concern that, if only a minority of schools have such policies, only a minority of providers will have them too. There must also be a danger that, as cost will be a driving factor in the awarding of these contracts, quality standards may be compromised. We cannot afford a situation where there is a mismatch between a school’s expectations and requirements and a provider’s readiness and ability to fulfil them.

Finally, on the drafting of Amendment 209, I assume that my noble friend Lady Morgan has in mind that training on allergy awareness and administering EpiPens should be provided to all staff and therefore could easily be accommodated within the general safeguarding training required of all. I say this because there might be a temptation to restrict it to those in close contact with food and the kitchen. The reality is that, although anaphylactic shock tends to happen quickly, it can occur even several hours later, so all staff need to be trained to recognise it in environments and locations where the association might not immediately be apparent, for instance on the sports field.

A Labour source is quoted today in one national newspaper as saying that this Bill will

“drive improvement for every child in the country”.

I doubt whether even the most ardent proponent of the Bill could attempt credibly to justify such a sweeping assertion. It is, however, beyond doubt that these amendments, if adopted, would indeed improve the well-being of many hundreds of thousands of children.