Education secretary Bridget Phillipson says it is ‘absolutely sickening’ for Tories to vote against child protection legislation
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning and if anything she was even stronger than Keir Starmer (see 9.35am) in attacking the Conservatives over the reasoned amendment they have tabled that would block the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. Speaking on the Today programme, she said:
Let me just be absolutely clear about the approach that we’re seeing today from the Conservatives. What they’re setting out would kill this legislation. It would kill it stone dead. This is the single biggest piece of children safeguarding legislation in a generation that they intend to block, that they want to stop altogether, all on the altar of political opportunism …
The measures that we’re setting out today, around making sure that everyone involved in children’s lives work to keep children safe will be absolutely central to how we stop more children being exposed to abuse.
So if the Conservatives want to vote against that today, they need to explain, if they come on your programme later today, why they are stopping measures, why they are seeking to block measures that will keep children safe. They are bandwagon jumpers who have absolutely no shame.
And on Times Radio she said:
[The Conservatives] come along today as we set out legislation to protect the very children they claim to care about and they intend to block it and kill it stone dead. It is absolutely sickening.
Here is the Department for Education’s news release explaining what the bill will do for child protection.
Key events
Tories say children’s wellbeing and schools bill ‘educational vandalism’ because of its impact on academies
The Conservatives are making the debate about the children’s wellbeing and schools bill into one about an inquiry into grooming gangs, but they were determined to vote against it anyway because it will restrict the freedom of academies in England.They regard the extension of academies – schools free from local authority control – as one of their main public policy achievements since 2010.
Under the new bill, academies will no longer be able to set pay rates for teachers themselves. They will have to follow the national teacher guidelines for pay and conditions.
According to the Tories, there are at least 533 academy schools that exceed the national pay scale, or offer other improved conditions. They claim more than 20,000 teachers working in these schools could lose out as a result of the bill.
Neil O’Brien, a shadow schools minister, said:
Labour’s schools bill is a piece of educational vandalism which will lead to pay cuts for good teachers, ends the vital requirement to turn failing schools over to new management, and will enable local authorities to share out pupils from good schools to prop up poor ones.
We can already see from Wales, where Labour have already implemented this agenda, that the results have been catastrophic, with Welsh school results slumping even as schools in England have climbed the international league tables.
Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, defended her party’s call for a new inquiry into grooming gangs in her interviews this morning. Explaining why the party wanted an inquiry now, when it did not propose one when it was in office, she told Sky News:
There is much more information that has come to light, this is an evolving picture. There is more that we need to understand and, as a result, it makes sense to do a national inquiry alongside taking forward further steps to help support and protect victims.
Pointing to a report from the grooming gangs taskforce just before the election that showed 550 people had been arrested in the past year, she added:
This is about new information which is coming forward about the extent of what’s happening and us needing more information to take this forward.
I would like this to be done on a cross-party basis, where we talk about these things, we are able to have policy debates, without people calling each other names.
Trott seemed to be referring to this Home Office announcement about the work of the grooming gangs taskforce from May last year. It did not suggest a new inquiry might be necessary.
Text of Tory reasoned amendment that would stop children’s wellbeing and schools bill
For the record, here is the text of the reasoned amendment tabled by Conservatives to the motion saying the children’s wellbeing and schools bill should get a second reading.
That this house, while welcoming measures to improve child protection and safeguarding, declines to give a second reading to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill because it undermines the long-standing combination of school freedom and accountability that has led to educational standards rising in England, effectively abolishes academy freedoms which have been integral to that success and is regressive in approach, leading to worse outcomes for pupils; because it ends freedom over teacher pay and conditions, making it harder to attract and retain good teachers; because it ends freedom over Qualified Teacher Status, making teacher recruitment harder; because it removes school freedoms over the curriculum, leading to less innovation; because repealing the requirements for failing schools to become academies and for all new schools to be academies will undermine school improvement and remove the competition which has led to rising standards; because the Bill will make it harder for good schools to expand, reducing parental choice and access to a good education; and calls upon the Government to develop new legislative proposals for children’s wellbeing including establishing a national statutory inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation, focused on grooming gangs.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson says it is ‘absolutely sickening’ for Tories to vote against child protection legislation
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning and if anything she was even stronger than Keir Starmer (see 9.35am) in attacking the Conservatives over the reasoned amendment they have tabled that would block the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. Speaking on the Today programme, she said:
Let me just be absolutely clear about the approach that we’re seeing today from the Conservatives. What they’re setting out would kill this legislation. It would kill it stone dead. This is the single biggest piece of children safeguarding legislation in a generation that they intend to block, that they want to stop altogether, all on the altar of political opportunism …
The measures that we’re setting out today, around making sure that everyone involved in children’s lives work to keep children safe will be absolutely central to how we stop more children being exposed to abuse.
So if the Conservatives want to vote against that today, they need to explain, if they come on your programme later today, why they are stopping measures, why they are seeking to block measures that will keep children safe. They are bandwagon jumpers who have absolutely no shame.
And on Times Radio she said:
[The Conservatives] come along today as we set out legislation to protect the very children they claim to care about and they intend to block it and kill it stone dead. It is absolutely sickening.
Here is the Department for Education’s news release explaining what the bill will do for child protection.
Keir Starmer says Tories ‘more interested in retweets than safeguarding of children’ if they vote for amendment
Good morning. Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch will be in the Commons today for the first PMQs of 2025 and the Tory calls for national inquiry into grooming gangs will continue to be near the top of the news agenda. That is because Badenoch is pushing for a vote on the children’s wellbeing and schools bill that would block the legislation and call on the government to set up an inquiry instead. The inquiry element is a procedural red herring because the Conservatives would have voted against the bill anyway. But, if the Speaker does allow a vote on the Tory reasoned amendment, Badenoch will be able to launch a social media campaign accusing Labour of voting against a grooming gang inquiry.
The Conservatives are opposed to the bill primarily because it will restrict some of the freedoms enjoyed by academies. But the legislation also contains safeguarding measures that have widespread support, and Starmer has given an interview to the Daily Mirror saying that, if the Tories vote for their amendment, it will show they are more interested in retweets than children’s safety. He told the paper:
I would implore any right-thinking Tory MP to vote for the bill because [the Conservative reasoned amendment] would kill the bill, this would kill the legislation. It would kill the provisions for a unique identifying number that will stop children falling through the cracks …
No MP should be voting down children’s safeguarding measures. It’s shocking they are even thinking about this as a tactic. It’s the elevation of the desire for retweets over any real interest in the safeguarding of children.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary,has been echoing this message on a morning interview round. More on that soon.
The Conservatives have dismissed claims that they’re just bandwagoning, and that they are only pushing for an inquiry because Elon Musk, Reform UK and GB News have been banging on about this for some time. But Badenoch first tweeted about this on Thursday last week, at which point the bandwagon was already rolling, and last night one of the most senior figures in her team, the shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith, posted a message on X that gave a revealing insight into the party’s thinking. Without mentioning child sex abuse, Griffiths said that Musk was someone who “may have saved humanity”.
The @elonmusk purchase of X may have saved humanity.
With X becoming a true freedom of speech platform, the common ground of public opinion is no longer determined by a left-leaning elite.
Recent political earthquakes in the US, the UK and now Canada are a release of pent up democratic will as citizens regain their ability to speak freely.
Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press created the preconditions for democracies to replace bad kings or clerics.
X is now doing the same for unaccountable and failing bureaucratic states.
Badenoch hasn’t been quite this effusive, but last year she did say she was a “huge fan of Elon Musk” because of what he had done to champion free speech. Musk’s critics take a very different view; looking at what has happened to X since he took over, they would argue that the Badenoch/Griffith assessment is only accurate if you define free speech as meaning primarily extremism, misinformation, lies and racism.
Some of this may get thrashed out later in the Commons. Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Andrew Dilnot, who produced a report on social care reform 14 years ago that has never been implemented, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: MPs begin debating the second reading of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. They will vote at 7pm.
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