“Today, after months of work, the Government has tabled the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, a significant step towards enhancing our education and care system. This Bill introduces several key measures:

• Reforming children’s social care: Extending the role of virtual school heads to all children in need and those in formal kinship arrangements, ensuring dedicated support for their educational achievement.
  
• Introducing free breakfast clubs: Ensuring breakfast clubs are available before school at all state-funded primary schools in England, with existing school food standards applying to these provisions.
  
• Regulating school uniforms: Limiting the number of branded items schools can require, reducing costs for families.
  
• Establishing a register for children not in school: Requiring local authorities to maintain a register of children receiving education outside of school, such as through home education, to ensure all children are accounted for.
  
• Strengthening child protection: Introducing measures to prevent individuals under child protection investigations from removing children from school for home education, enhancing safeguarding.
  
• Creating highly trained and qualified teachers, and modernising the curriculum: Increasing investment in teacher training, prioritising qualifications in key subject areas, and updating the national curriculum to include skills for the modern world, such as digital literacy, climate awareness, and critical thinking.

Despite these vital provisions, the Conservative Party amendment seeks to refuse the Bill a second reading, effectively aiming to halt its progress. I cannot support this amendment. This does not mean I do not treat the issue of abuse with the greatest gravity – having previously overseen children’s social care in local government, and spoken out on the issue of abuse as an MP, I will be working to urge the Government to implement the findings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and take other actions to address abuse.

IICSA, led by Professor Alexis Jay, concluded in 2022 after seven years of work and £186 million in expenditure. It conducted 15 investigations into issues such as grooming gangs, abuse in schools, and failures within church settings. The final report highlighted the endemic nature of abuse across society and made 20 critical recommendations, including establishing a national child protection authority, introducing stronger measures to tackle online abuse, and making the failure to report abuse a criminal offence.

Despite these comprehensive findings, none of the recommendations were implemented by the previous Conservative Government. Professor Jay has expressed frustration over the lack of progress, emphasising the need to act on existing recommendations.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill represents a crucial opportunity to address some of the urgent needs identified by the IICSA. Without action, these critical reforms and the safety and wellbeing of children will remain unaddressed.”