The Tory amendment was a deliberate wrecking amendment to completely reject the whole Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. This bill has a whole raft of measures aimed at safeguarding vulnerable children, toughen up the rules on home schooling, and change some of the rules on academy schools. The whole Bill would have automatically fallen if the Tory amendment had passed.
As has been made perfectly clear by everyone involved in the IICSA Report, including Alexis Jay herself, by Andrew Norfolk, the Times reporter who first broke the Rotherham grooming gangs story, by Nazir Afzal, the barrister who prosecuted the Rochdale grooming gangs, and most importantly by the majority of the victims who have spoken in public recently, what is needed now is the implementation of the 10 main recommendations in IICSA. A further public inquiry, which has not been ruled out in any case, but would take years to report, would introduce delay into protecting vulnerable children. The evil Keir Starmer, while DPP, was the person who changed the rules on prosecutions to allow the grooming gang members to be prosecuted in the first place.
The Tories could have done this 2 years ago, but didn’t. Kemi Badenoch was Children’s Minister when IICSA was published, but the first time she has ever even mentioned the grooming gangs in Parliament was today at PMQ’s. That’s how much they cared about vulnerable children.
How anyone can view this amendment, which stood zero chance of passing, as anything other than performative theatrics is beyond me.
