Nurseries and Early Years Providers: CCTV

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Olivia Bailey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank all hon. Members for attending and contributing to this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq) on securing the debate, and on her excellent speech. She has fought hard for her constituents following the horrendous case in her constituency, and I thank her for that. She is a true champion for children, for her constituents and for those working in the early years sector who, she rightly says, spend every day thinking about how to keep children safe. I am grateful to her for sharing the views of providers in her constituency with whom she has taken the time to discuss the issue of CCTV, and grateful to her for sharing the harrowing stories that she has shared in this debate, which underline the urgency and significance of the action that we must take. She has made a very powerful case for the use of CCTV.

I look forward to reading and hearing about the outcomes of the important inquiry of the Education Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). The question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) will be considered by the panel that we are currently getting under way, which I shall say a bit more about. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) talked about the role of Ofsted. That is at the front of the Government’s mind. We have increased the frequency of Ofsted inspections in early years settings, and in our review we will continue to consider the points that she raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate asked a number of questions that I address in the speech that I have prepared; I will come on to those answers.

Nothing is more important, for me and for this Government, than the safety of our children. The Department for Education is constantly working to ensure that children in early years settings benefit from the highest possible safeguarding standards. In September, we strengthened the rules to cover safer recruitment, what to do in the event of child absences, whistleblowing procedures, safer eating and paediatric first aid training. We also introduced new mandatory safeguarding training requirements, so that all early years educators must complete training that meets our statutory criteria.

On CCTV, we are acting with the urgency that every hon. Member in this debate rightly expects. In December, the Secretary of State for Education announced that she would appoint an expert advisory panel to review how digital devices and CCTV are used in early years settings, from a safeguarding perspective. I can now go into further details on the expertise that the panel will hold, how it will operate and the panel’s objectives.

The panel will meet monthly, with the first meeting planned for later this month. It will consider key points including, but not limited to, whether CCTV should be mandated in early years settings, CCTV’s role as part of a setting’s wider safeguarding measures, how CCTV and digital devices should be managed to ensure that children’s privacy is protected alongside their safety, and what systems, training and safeguards are necessary to address concerns such as cyber-security and the possible misuse of images. We must remember that, sadly, image-generating technology can be used for harm as well as for good, and we have seen, in some of those awful cases, that the presence of CCTV has not prevented harm. Digital devices within settings have been used to generate unlawful images and perpetrate abuse. We have seen that nurseries and early years settings face risks from hackers, such as in the case faced by a nursery chain last year. For those reasons, we are working across Government to ensure that all possible angles are considered, and that any recommended changes, including those relating to any mandatory CCTV requirements, have a unified cross-Government response so that any changes are brought in with the utmost care.

The panel will consist of representatives from both the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and from the Home Office, along with relevant bodies such as the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. In addition, the National Police Chiefs’ Council will be invited, so that CCTV’s use as evidence, best practice and potential misuse are covered. It is also key that the voices of all early years providers are heard in our review, along with those of academic experts in early years safeguarding and surveillance technology. Most importantly of all, I want the voices of parents and of hon. Members advocating in this debate to be at the heart of the review. I will be in touch with any hon. Member in this debate who would like to know more about how they can be involved as soon as possible.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I want to publicly thank the Minister for attending a roundtable with the parents of Twickenham Green nursery victims last year. The perpetrator is to be deported tomorrow, and many of those parents feel that justice has not been served, but the best justice would be to make sure that such a case does not happen again, so I welcome the panel. Will the Minister assure me and my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison), who represents the parents of baby Gigi Meehan, that we can feed into that panel on behalf of those parents to make sure that their concerns and views are heard, and that we have learned the lessons from the CCTV pilot rollout in Australia?

[Olivia Bailey]

I thank the hon. Member for her campaigning for her constituents, and for the powerful roundtable that she invited me to. I can reassure her that, as I just said, any parent or hon. Member in this debate who would like to contribute to the work of that panel will have the opportunity to do so. I will be in touch to explain how that will happen.

Before I conclude, I would like to say a word about safer sleep. In addition to calls for mandatory CCTV, the Campaign for Gigi has called for clear, statutory safe-sleep guidance for early years settings. My policy officials have worked with safe-sleep experts, including the Lullaby Trust, on proposed new wording for the early years foundation stage, which will add more detail without providers’ needing to refer to other guidance. We plan to make those changes as soon as possible.

In closing, I again thank all hon. Members for their passion and dedication.

[Munira Wilson]

I know we are talking about CCTV, but another important thing that the Australian Government have just introduced is a register for early years providers, so that perpetrators can be stopped from going on to hurt other young victims, as happened in the Twickenham Green nursery case of Roksana Lecka. Will the Minister and her Government also look at having a register for early years practitioners in the UK?