UK Parliament / Open data

Schools Bill [HL]

My Lords, I lend my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on Amendment 8 and to my noble friend on Amendment 37. This issue about the mental health of students and pupils is very important. I have no doubt that the Minister will argue that mental health is subsumed within “health”, and therefore that there is no need for this, but sometimes you do need to give absolute clarity to parts of society that mental health must be a greater priority than before, and this is a very useful way of doing it.

The Minister was involved in the passage of the Health and Care Act of blessed memory, which some of us were involved in. It struck me that when we were talking about the membership of ICPs and ICBs—integrated care partnerships and integrated care boards—I do not think we explicitly discussed whether the education sector would be around the table. Could the Minister look into whether there is some way of encouraging that the education sector is listened to? It seems rather like the police service in that it is being asked to pick up a lot of the issues that arise partly because our mental health services are so fragile at the moment, particularly for young people and adolescents, as we know. I do not wish to add more burden to heads and schools but this will bear thinking about. I hope there will be some collaboration between the Minister’s department and the Department of Health.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

822 cc1210-1 

Session

2022-23

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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