Prime minister says if Tories vote for amendment on children’s wellbeing bill, it will show ‘they are more interested in retweets than children’s safety’ as shadow business secretary praises MuskFor 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.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.[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. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/jan/08/conservatives-elon-musk-keir-starmer-kemi-badenoch-child-safety-pmqs-uk-politics-latest-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2025-01-08 10:00:00
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Top Tory claims Elon Musk ‘may have saved humanity’ as Starmer attacks Badenoch over child safety – UK politics live
