Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, I speak briefly to support, from the perspective of teachers, the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. Of course, teachers and other front-line caring professionals carry immense responsibility for the welfare and safety of children, which brings with it considerable legal obligations that few other professions face. Employers in schools are rightly duty-bound by safeguarding law to investigate every allegation, however unfounded it may later prove to be. As a result, teachers are far more likely than most to face formal hearings during their careers. The number of allegations is rising sharply, with data from Teacher Tapp, which surveys about 11,000 teachers every day, showing that, in the last academic year alone, allegations against teachers increased by around 35% compared with the previous year; that figure rises to nearly 60% in schools with the highest proportion of pupils on free school meals. As we have debated earlier, in this Bill and others, technology is changing the landscape, with an ability to create ever more complex complaints using artificial intelligence. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said already, this carries a human cost but also a financial cost, with suspended teachers remaining on their salaries while schools fund cover. Some local authorities are spending hundreds of thousands pounds each year on suspended staff awaiting hearings, and still more when flawed procedures lead to tribunal claims. The right to be accompanied by someone trained to provide calm, professional support is not an indulgence but a practical safeguard. The strength of feeling in the profession is clear and almost unanimous: according to Teacher Tapp, 97% of teachers believe they should be entitled to a trained companion, whether or not they belong to a union, and almost two-thirds say they would wish to have legal representation. This speaks volumes about the professional anxiety that teachers and other school staff face when formal allegations arise. I hope very much that, when the Minister comes to close, he can confirm that this review will look closely at how accompaniment rights operate in practice, including teachers and other school staff within that to make sure that those who dedicate their lives to educating and caring for our children are treated with the fairness, dignity and compassion that they deserve.