Disclosure and Safeguarding: At-risk Children

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) for introducing the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee and the petitioners, and for setting out clearly the need for a child risk disclosure mechanism for at-risk children.

What happened to Maya Chappell was a tragedy. It was a failure across our public services that led to the death of a toddler. It should never have happened and must never happen again. I am here to speak as the constituency MP for Maya’s great-aunts, Gemma Chappell and Rachael Walls, and her many other family members, including her father, James Chappell, who have driven this campaign and have worked so hard to get more than 110,000 signatures. This is not only their campaign: it has brought together our local community in Consett and people across County Durham and from every constituency. It is a campaign that says, “This must stop.”

We must not just learn from Maya’s death but act to protect vulnerable and at-risk children. This coming together is the tireless work of Maya’s great-aunts, Gemma Chappell and Rachael Walls. I pay tribute to them for drawing all of us into their campaign and working with other families who have lost children through abuse to achieve that change. There are too many children to mention, but Gemma and Rachael have worked with the families of Star Hobson, Daniel Pelka, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Tony Hudgell, who survived but still bears the scars. I know the pain they have felt and are still feeling, and I commend them for their work.

The system failed Maya. Her father, James, noticed bruises and approached Durham’s First Contact service with his concerns about the mother’s new partner, Michael Daymond. He was told to contact the police, who processed the matter under Clare’s law and Sarah’s law. However, an officer simply phoned Maya’s mother, who lied and said that the relationship was over. The police closed the case without even the courtesy of a single face-to-face visit or seeing Maya. The safeguarding review explicitly called out that lack of professional curiosity.

Those failures clearly show that there is still a gap that needs to be addressed. That Maya’s case was reported under Clare’s law and Sarah’s law and there was still not a single home visit shows that there is more to be done. Both laws are police-led schemes. Sarah’s law covers only convicted child sexual offenders and Clare’s law focuses on domestic abuse against an adult partner. Neither scheme protects a child in their own right from an adult with a history of non-sexual physical abuse, neglect or coercive control. Unlike the previous two laws, Maya’s law would place a statutory duty on multiple agencies, including the police and healthcare and social care providers.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

I, too, commend the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) on his excellent opening speech on behalf of the petitioners. Star Hobson, who was murdered in 2020, was a constituent of mine. The findings of that case highlighted dysfunctionality in the reporting across all the safeguarding organisations that were ultimately responsible. I absolutely support Maya’s law and the recommendations in it. Does the hon. Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) agree that when safeguarding concerns are raised, all organisations should be duty bound to feed into the process in the best interests of the child?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I know that Gemma and Rachael have worked very closely with Star Hobson’s family to ensure that lessons are learned and action is taken. That is why there is such widespread support for this proposal.

Maya’s law would place a statutory duty across multiple agencies, including the police and healthcare and social care providers, proactively to disclose relevant risk histories to a child’s protective parent or guardian. Maya’s law could then trigger protective action based on documented patterns of concern, closing the dangerous gap where abusers hide because they do not yet have a formal criminal charge.

The death of Maya Chappell is not, sadly, an isolated incident. It is part of a devastating national pattern, which is of great concern. Across the country, 35% of child homicides—the murder of someone under 16, with their whole life ahead of them—are committed by a parent or step-parent. Those are the people a child is meant to trust the most. More than 50% of serious case reviews cite communication failures as a primary cause of child deaths. That represents a serious and persistent failure to protect children in their own homes.

In January, the Government formally responded to this petition, stating that they are

“not minded to introduce the elements of a Child Risk Disclosure Scheme requiring police to disclose information to parents and guardians”.

With the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in its final stages, there will be real improvements in child protection, with multi-agency child protection teams and other measures being introduced, but there is still a flaw within the Bill. Although clause 4 does, for the first time, require professional agencies such as local authorities, education providers and NHS trusts to share information, it misses the key point in Maya’s law—it does not mandate the disclosure of any information to the protective non-abusive parent. Sharing data between agencies does nothing—did nothing—to help a father like James Chappell, who was left in the dark while his daughter was murdered.

The Minister has been very helpful over the last year, but I want to ask him some specific questions. Will he take steps beyond data sharing between professionals to guarantee the right of the protective non-abusive parent to be informed of a risk that threatens their child? Will he introduce measures to ensure that information received by professionals in all agencies is acted on consistently and swiftly, and shared with protective parents or carers, to ensure that children are protected from harm?

I hope that the Minister will continue to work so that tragedies like Maya’s murder never happen again. I know that hope is shared by the 110,000 petitioners, and by Gemma, Rachael, James and the whole community of Consett and County Durham. Our children deserve no less.