Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her department has made of the potential merits of the creation of a cross-department ministerial role to ensure data is properly shared across the public sector, in the context of the cases of Sara Sharif and Maya Chappell.

This government prioritises keeping children safe. For too long, poor information sharing has been a contributing factor to serious child safeguarding incidents. We are determined to address this challenge head-on. The tragic cases of Sara Sharif and Maya Chappell underline the vital importance of agencies and practitioners working together and sharing information to keep children safe.

We have announced the biggest overhaul to children’s social care in a generation to ensure opportunity for all children. This includes increased investment and landmark legislation through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act to improve multi-agency working measures to establish new multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority area, improve information sharing between agencies, and automatically include education and childcare settings in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

We will commence the new Information Sharing Duty in autumn 2026, consulting on associated statutory guidance by summer 2026 to support practitioners in discharging this duty. We are piloting the NHS number as the Consistent Identifier, as set out in ‘Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive’ and the NHS 10-year plan.

To deliver these commitments, Ministers work closely across government departments and directly with statutory safeguarding agencies with governance in place to escalate and tackle emerging issues.