The Conservative Party’s plan to bring forward an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has been described as “utterly sickening” by the education secretary.
Kemi Badenoch’s party has joined calls by Elon Musk for a new UK-wide inquiry into child sexual abuse, despite a seven-year independent review having concluded its work in 2022.
Instead of supporting measures to protect vulnerable children, such as tougher rules around home-schooling and support for those in care, the Tories will bring forward an amendment to the bill to call for ministers to establish a national statutory inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation, focused on grooming gangs.
The move will kill measures to protect children “stone dead”, Bridget Phillipson has told the BBC, describing the amendment as “utterly sickening”.
She told Radio 4’s Today programme the bill was “the single biggest piece of children safeguarding legislation in a generation”, which the Conservatives intended to block “on the altar of political opportunism”.
Speaking to Sky News she added: “I thought there wasn’t a limit to how far they would sink, and I was wrong.”