‘Absolutely sickening’ for Tories to vote towards little one safety laws, schooling secretary says – UK politics reside

The Commons science committee has renwed its name for Elon Musk to offer proof to it as a part of its inquiry into misinformation on social media.

In an announcement this morning, the Labour MP Chi Onwurah, the committee’s chair, stated:

The headlines during the last couple of days illustrate how potent misinformation on social media may be. Social media is a spot the place one put up, even when false, may be amplified to achieve tens of millions of individuals.

Final summer time, false and dangerous content material unfold throughout social media induced violence on our streets. We shouldn’t settle for viral misinformation – or the real-world hurt it causes – as an inevitable a part of social media, and we should make it possible for false on-line content material doesn’t gasoline violent assaults within the UK once more.

Following the riots, the science, innovation and know-how committee has launched an inquiry to look at how algorithms utilized by social media platforms can unfold false and dangerous content material. An important a part of that is listening to from main social media platforms, together with X, and we’ve invited Mr Musk to look earlier than the committee.

This isn’t about selecting a struggle with Mr Musk. We need to perceive the know-how he has formed and his views on X’s strategy to misinformation and free speech. Quite than communicate to UK politicians by way of his X account, I hope that he’ll take up our invitation and take the chance to have interaction with the democratic course of and provides us his ideas instantly.

If Mr Musk declines to come back, the committee hopes {that a} senior consultant of X can attend in his stead to offer us readability on the corporate’s use of algorithms.

The Conservatives are making the talk in regards to the youngsters’s wellbeing and colleges invoice into one about an inquiry into grooming gangs, however they have been decided to vote towards it anyway as a result of it should prohibit the liberty of academies in England.They regard the extension of academies – colleges free from native authority management – as one among their primary public coverage achievements since 2010.

Below the brand new invoice, academies will now not have the ability to set pay charges for academics themselves. They must observe the nationwide trainer tips for pay and situations.

In response to the Tories, there are at the least 533 academy colleges that exceed the nationwide pay scale, or supply different improved situations. They declare greater than 20,000 academics working in these colleges might lose out because of the invoice.

Neil O’Brien, a shadow colleges minister, stated:

Labour’s colleges invoice is a chunk of instructional vandalism which can result in pay cuts for good academics, ends the very important requirement to show failing colleges over to new administration, and can allow native authorities to share out pupils from good colleges to prop up poor ones.

We will already see from Wales, the place Labour have already applied this agenda, that the outcomes have been catastrophic, with Welsh college outcomes slumping whilst colleges in England have climbed the worldwide league tables.

Laura Trott, the shadow schooling secretary, defended her occasion’s name for a brand new inquiry into grooming gangs in her interviews this morning. Explaining why the occasion wished an inquiry now, when it didn’t suggest one when it was in workplace, she instructed Sky Information:

There’s way more data that has come to gentle, that is an evolving image. There’s extra that we have to perceive and, in consequence, it is smart to do a nationwide inquiry alongside taking ahead additional steps to assist help and shield victims.

Pointing to a report from the grooming gangs taskforce simply earlier than the election that confirmed 550 folks had been arrested up to now yr, she added:

That is about new data which is coming ahead in regards to the extent of what’s taking place and us needing extra data to take this ahead.

I would really like this to be achieved on a cross-party foundation, the place we speak about these items, we’re in a position to have coverage debates, with out folks calling one another names.

Trott appeared to be referring to this Residence Workplace announcement in regards to the work of the grooming gangs taskforce from Might final yr. It didn’t counsel a brand new inquiry is likely to be essential.

For the report, right here is the textual content of the reasoned modification tabled by Conservatives to the movement saying the youngsters’s wellbeing and colleges invoice ought to get a second studying.

That this home, whereas welcoming measures to enhance little one safety and safeguarding, declines to offer a second studying to the youngsters’s wellbeing and colleges invoice as a result of it undermines the long-standing mixture of college freedom and accountability that has led to instructional requirements rising in England, successfully abolishes academy freedoms which have been integral to that success and is regressive in strategy, resulting in worse outcomes for pupils; as a result of it ends freedom over trainer pay and situations, making it more durable to draw and retain good academics; as a result of it ends freedom over Certified Instructor Standing, making trainer recruitment more durable; as a result of it removes college freedoms over the curriculum, resulting in much less innovation; as a result of repealing the necessities for failing colleges to grow to be academies and for all new colleges to be academies will undermine college enchancment and take away the competitors which has led to rising requirements; as a result of the Invoice will make it more durable for good colleges to increase, lowering parental alternative and entry to an excellent schooling; and calls upon the Authorities to develop new legislative proposals for kids’s wellbeing together with establishing a nationwide statutory inquiry into historic little one sexual exploitation, centered on grooming gangs.

Bridget Phillipson, the schooling secretary, was on interview responsibility for No 10 this morning and if something she was even stronger than Keir Starmer (see 9.35am) in attacking the Conservatives over the reasoned modification they’ve tabled that might block the youngsters’s wellbeing and colleges invoice. Talking on the As we speak programme, she stated:

Let me simply be completely clear in regards to the strategy that we’re seeing at the moment from the Conservatives. What they’re setting out would kill this laws. It could kill it stone useless. That is the one greatest piece of kids safeguarding laws in a era that they intend to dam, that they need to cease altogether, all on the altar of political opportunism …

The measures that we’re setting out at the moment, round ensuring that everybody concerned in youngsters’s lives work to maintain youngsters secure might be completely central to how we cease extra youngsters being uncovered to abuse.

So if the Conservatives need to vote towards that at the moment, they should clarify, if they arrive in your programme later at the moment, why they’re stopping measures, why they’re searching for to dam measures that can hold youngsters secure. They’re bandwagon jumpers who’ve completely no disgrace.

And on Instances Radio she stated:

[The Conservatives] come alongside at the moment as we set out laws to guard the very youngsters they declare to care about and so they intend to dam it and kill it stone useless. It’s completely sickening.

Right here is the Division for Training’s information launch explaining what the invoice will do for little one safety.

Good morning. Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch might be within the Commons at the moment for the primary PMQs of 2025 and the Tory requires nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs will proceed to be close to the highest of the information agenda. That’s as a result of Badenoch is pushing for a vote on the youngsters’s wellbeing and colleges invoice that might block the laws and name on the federal government to arrange an inquiry as a substitute. The inquiry factor is a procedural purple herring as a result of the Conservatives would have voted towards the invoice anyway. However, if the Speaker does permit a vote on the Tory reasoned modification, Badenoch will have the ability to launch a social media marketing campaign accusing Labour of voting towards a grooming gang inquiry.

The Conservatives are against the invoice primarily as a result of it should prohibit a number of the freedoms loved by academies. However the laws additionally comprises safeguarding measures which have widespread help, and Starmer has given an interview to the Each day Mirror saying that, if the Tories vote for his or her modification, it should present they’re extra interested by retweets than youngsters’s security. He instructed the paper:

I might implore any right-thinking Tory MP to vote for the invoice as a result of [the Conservative reasoned amendment] would kill the invoice, this is able to kill the laws. It could kill the provisions for a novel figuring out quantity that can cease youngsters falling by way of the cracks …

No MP must be voting down youngsters’s safeguarding measures. It’s surprising they’re even interested by this as a tactic. It’s the elevation of the will for retweets over any actual curiosity within the safeguarding of kids.

Bridget Phillipson, the schooling secretary,has been echoing this message on a morning interview spherical. Extra on that quickly.

The Conservatives have dismissed claims that they’re simply bandwagoning, and that they’re solely pushing for an inquiry as a result of Elon Musk, Reform UK and GB Information have been banging on about this for a while. However Badenoch first tweeted about this on Thursday final week, at which level the bandwagon was already rolling, and final evening one of the crucial senior figures in her workforce, the shadow enterprise secretary Andrew Griffith, posted a message on X that gave a revealing perception into the occasion’s considering. With out mentioning little one intercourse abuse, Griffiths stated that Musk was somebody who “may have saved humanity”.

The @elonmusk buy of X could have saved humanity.

With X turning into a real freedom of speech platform, the widespread floor of public opinion is now not decided by a left-leaning elite.

Current political earthquakes within the US, the UK and now Canada are a launch of pent up democratic will as residents regain their capability to talk freely.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press created the preconditions for democracies to interchange dangerous kings or clerics.

X is now doing the identical for unaccountable and failing bureaucratic states.

Badenoch hasn’t been fairly this effusive, however final yr she did say she was a “huge fan of Elon Musk” due to what he had achieved to champion free speech. Musk’s critics take a really completely different view; taking a look at what has occurred to X since he took over, they’d argue that the Badenoch/Griffith evaluation is simply correct when you outline free speech as which means primarily extremism, misinformation, lies and racism.

A few of this may occasionally get thrashed out later within the Commons. Right here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Andrew Dilnot, who produced a report on social care reform 14 years in the past that has by no means been applied, provides proof to the Commons well being committee.

Midday: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: MPs start debating the second studying of the youngsters’s wellbeing and colleges invoice. They may vote at 7pm.

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