Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Catherine Atkinson and Pam Cox(4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Catherine Atkinson
The evidence is clear on the real benefits that breakfast can give our children and young people.
Secondly, the Bill requires local authorities to consider kinship care before they issue proceedings for a child to go into the care system. Avoiding taking children into care when it is safe to do so leads to far better outcomes. In the first decade of my practice as a barrister, I spent significant time in family care proceedings; I was frustrated by delays then, and the situation now is far worse. Delay and limbo are hugely damaging to vulnerable children and their families.
Finally, I am hugely disappointed by the Opposition wrecking amendment. I have spent the past seven years on a public inquiry, and I have some insight into the benefits and limitations of those inquiries. The Opposition’s newly discovered conviction that a further inquiry on child sexual exploitation is needed and their attempts to hijack this Bill smack of political point scoring and headline grabbing, and the suggestions we have heard that a further inquiry could be done in a year are wholly unrealistic. Inquiries can make recommendations, but they cannot implement them; that is our job, and wrecking this Bill will not achieve that.
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has highlighted the landmark nature of this Bill. Many of the most historically significant measures for improving child welfare and wellbeing have enjoyed cross-party support, and I am thinking here of the Children Act 1908, the—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Interventions really do have to be brief. A lot of Members still wish to get in, and we are on a very tight time limit. The hon. Lady has already earned an additional minute of injury time, and I regret that I will not get all Members in if we continue to have long interventions.