Bid to halt safeguarding bill sickening, says Phillipson

Pushing for a new national inquiry into grooming gangs by halting the progress of a bill aimed at bolstering child safety is "utterly sickening", the education secretary has said.

Bridget Phillipson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the Tory Party's plan to bring forward an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill "would kill it stone dead".

She said it was "the single biggest piece of children safeguarding legislation in a generation", which the Conservatives intended to block "on the altar of political opportunism".

The Conservatives have joined calls by Elon Musk for a new UK-wide inquiry into child sexual abuse, despite a wide-ranging independent probe having concluded its work in 2022.

The Conservatives will bring forward an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill on Wednesday, which is expected to call for ministers to establish a "national statutory inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation, focused on grooming gangs".

The amendment is unlikely to be supported by a majority in the Commons, as the government wants to roll out the recommendations of the inquiry led by Prof Alexis Jay, rather than open a new inquiry.

The non-binding amendment also calls for the Commons to halt the progress of the bill, which includes measures aimed at bolstering safeguarding for children.

Phillipson said the government backed local inquiries into grooming gangs and said the row over calls for a new national probe had "lost sight" of victims.