Children’s safety is one of those issues where politicians normally put politics to one side and work together to make better laws.
So when the government introduced the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, it was appalling to see political games dominate the debate.
The Bill is quite broad ranging, covering things like employment of children, school breakfast clubs and uniforms, teacher misconduct, and children in care. But it grabbed attention because of children suffering in the worst ways.
Our collective memory is seared with the names of Victoria Climbie, Baby P, Daniel Pelka, and now Sara Sharif.
In each of their cases and others, young lives were cut short due to the brutality and neglect of those who should have been looking after them, and because of repeated failings by public agencies.
To address this, the new Bill includes measures to improve child safeguarding, such as establishing multi-agency teams to monitor children’s welfare and ensure better data sharing through unique child identification codes.
And with thousands of children missing from school altogether, a proposed new register of those children will be crucial in protecting them.
My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I want to be a constructive opposition. We support a lot of the measures in the Bill and we’ve proposed amendments to improve it: to create a National Body for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and extend free school meals for all children in poverty.
Sadly, the Conservatives chose a less constructive approach. They claimed to want an inquiry into grooming gangs but instead of trying to add this to the Bill, they tabled what is known as a ‘wrecking amendment’.
Their amendment effectively said, if you want an inquiry, ditch this Bill entirely. If Parliament had voted for this, ripping up the legislation, all the positive safeguarding measures in the Bill would be lost and there would still be no grooming inquiry.
By deliberately tabling the amendment in this way, the Conservatives were able to disingenuously claim that some MPs had ‘voted against a grooming gangs inquiry’ and intentionally whip up a social media frenzy around it too.
Political games are rife in politics but when it’s the most vulnerable children who are used as pawns, it really is too much.
We’ve had many inquiries and many years of governments not taking any action.
Whether or not there’s a case for another inquiry, what children need now is action and I was proud to vote for that.
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