Disclosure and Safeguarding: At-risk Children

Monday 13th April 2026 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 731497 relating to a disclosure and safeguarding mechanism for at-risk children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and to open this important debate as a member of the Petitions Committee. The petition creator, Gemma Chappell, is the great-aunt of Maya Chappell, who was just two years old when she was tragically killed in September 2022 in County Durham. Maya was killed while in the care of her mother’s partner of nine weeks, Michael Daymond, who was subsequently convicted of Maya’s murder, while Maya’s mum was convicted of child cruelty and allowing her death. We are here today because of the extraordinary campaigning efforts of Gemma, her sister Rachael and other members of the family who refused to let what happened to Maya be forgotten.

Across the north-east of England, Maya’s smiling, innocent face has continued to be prominent, posing a devastating but simple question: will we as a society do everything possible to prevent a tragic death such as Maya’s from happening again? As a result, and aided by campaign support from The Northern Echo newspaper, more than 110,000 people have signed the petition asking that a new, proactive information-sharing safeguarding framework be put in place to protect at-risk children.

I would like to place on record my condolences to Maya’s family, as well as my admiration for how they are working on this issue through their grief. By telling Maya’s story in the media and in their campaign, they are encouraging others who have concerns about abuse to come forward and raise issues for investigation.

However, awareness is not the family’s sole aim. Gemma says it is time to move from expressions of sympathy to action. To spur that action, Maya’s family told me in our conversation in advance of today that they want every MP here to have a vivid idea of who Maya was. She was a loving, happy, adventurous child who enjoyed nothing more than running around the park and who loved Peppa Pig. Rachel calls her “the smiliest girl”. Maya had a notably sweet tooth, and her family remember her cheeky look as she ate two slices of cake at another child’s holy communion—and then went back for more. Maya was learning how to talk, and she had only just started speaking before she died. Her favourite words were “park”, “Peppa” and “daddy”.

As a parent, it is hard for me to comprehend the pain of losing a child, not least in such awful circumstances. Maya’s dad, James, was an important and loved part of her life. He raised concerns after seeing marks on her body, but those queries were dismissed by Maya’s mum. He was so concerned that he contacted police to ask about Daymond’s background, but Maya’s mum falsely claimed that she was not seeing him any longer, and that was accepted without corroboration.

Gemma is clear that we must not shy away from the awful realities of this case and what Maya suffered—the type of horrors suffered by the around 60 children a year who are killed by abuse or neglect. Maya was abused over a period of time; this was not a one-off event. She was abused for weeks. She was hurt. She lived in fear. Pathologists found a catalogue of injuries. In the end, Maya died as a result of being deliberately shaken and having a head injury inflicted.

The children such as Maya who are killed every year are not statistics: they are wonderful children, full of life and with their lives ahead of them. They are loved by many, but without a voice. Maya was too young to be able to alert anyone to the horror she was experiencing. It is for us in this House to be a voice for children such as Maya and to advocate for all possible steps we can take to prevent such deaths in the future.

I now come to the four specific asks in the petition, which together are being termed Maya’s law. The first ask is to

“Introduce a Child Risk Disclosure Scheme”

that would operate similarly to Clare’s law, or the domestic violence disclosure scheme, and Sarah’s law, or the child sex offender disclosure scheme, but that would be

“focused on the broader risk history of caregivers.”

The second ask is to

“Require statutory services (police, social care, health) to disclose relevant past”

information

“to the child’s parent or legal guardian when a risk is identified.”

The third ask is to

“Establish multi-agency response protocols, particularly where child contact, custody, or unsupervised access is being considered.”

The fourth ask is to

“Empower professionals to raise safeguarding alerts and initiate family court safeguarding interventions where known risks exist, even if not currently under active investigation.”

Thanks to the work of Gemma’s MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist), these matters—particularly the introduction of a child risk disclosure scheme—were subject to debate in this Chamber six months ago and received a response from the Children and Families Minister, whom we look forward to hearing from again today. That debate, and the Government’s response to the petition, highlighted that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will take key steps to strengthen safeguarding, including introducing a new information-sharing duty between agencies, which will end misconceptions about when information can and cannot be shared. In the six months since the last debate, the Bill has continued its passage through Parliament, and it should hopefully finally become law in the next few weeks.

The petitioner welcomes the action taken in the Bill, but they want to see a clear timeline for implementation and they emphasise that any new duties can be implemented only with improved professional training and practice. The petition’s key ask, though, remains outstanding and is not included in the Bill: strengthening the right of parents and close family members to request and to be proactively given information about the risks that other adults might pose to a child.

As part of my preparation for the debate, I had the opportunity to speak to a range of organisations working to protect children, as well as to organisations involved in existing disclosure and notification schemes, including Operation Encompass, which ensures that schools and, soon, early years education providers are notified when a child is at a home where there has been an attended incident of domestic abuse.

A child risk disclosure scheme along the lines requested in Maya’s law would be a significant undertaking. It would need to be clear about thresholds. For example, would only convictions be disclosed, or would wider intelligence about risk be too? I note that, last month, the Government announced they would create a new child cruelty register, following campaigning from the adoptive mother of Tony Hudgell. Will the Minister say a little about how the Government envisage the information held in that register being disclosable and to whom? Could that serve as the first step to the wider disclosure scheme that the petition seeks?

Any disclosure scheme would also have to specify who has the right to request or receive information. It is important to note at this point the range of different family structures that safeguarding, in practice and law, must operate with. In many cases, including Maya’s, a child’s parents may be separated. In some circumstances, wider family members, such as aunts, provide important supplementary caring roles, and their involvement is a contributing factor in strengthening the safety of a child. It is important that the professionals involved have the time and curiosity to understand the different structures and dynamics of the families they are working with.

In Maya’s case, disclosure was directed towards her mother, who tragically did not ensure her safety. In the review of Maya’s death, it was recommended that agencies should have shown greater professional curiosity and follow-up when a separated father such as James shared worries about his child. Across all serious case reviews of child deaths, the failure to share information between professionals is the most common issue identified and the main area where improvement could prevent harm.

However, it has also been flagged to me that there can sometimes be risks of sharing too much information beyond professionals, depending on the relationship dynamics of a particular family. Operation Encompass notifications are limited to trained recipients of information in professional settings. Gemma’s view is that the benefits afforded by proactive sharing would outweigh such risks, and she wants any disclosures to be as full as possible. I would be grateful if the Minister set out in his response what opportunities there are safely to increase the information available to families about the risks that children face, whether that be through a disclosure scheme or other mechanisms.

Everyone I have spoken to recognises that any new disclosure scheme would require significant resourcing in order to be implemented appropriately. I have heard consistently that resources too often do not meet demand in the current safeguarding system, with many organisations concerned that police forces do not have the capacity to meet the growing requirements on them. Can the Minister say something about the level of resources he envisages will be required to implement measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill? Can he also say whether, following implementation of steps such as the unique child identifier, which may in time enable more automated sharing of information between agencies, there will be a release of resource that could then be utilised for disclosure schemes such as that sought through Maya’s law?

Maya’s family believe that a disclosure scheme would have made a big difference in their tragic case, but they know that keeping children safe also requires child-focused services that can provide proactive and independent assessment of a child’s wellbeing and safety. That is a matter not of legislative change, but of clear service standards and proper resourcing. The Government rightly highlight their commitment to expanding early support for families, including through family hubs, but can the Minister say a bit more about his assessment of the wider services that contribute to safeguarding, especially health visiting, which the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has raised particular concern about? Maya did not receive the health visitor visits she should have, and such a visit could potentially have resulted in someone spotting the abuse she was being subjected to. Health visitor numbers have fallen by 43% since 2015, and some health visitors report caseloads of up to 1,000 families. One in five children does not receive their final health visitor review at age two—the age Maya was when she was killed. How do the Government plan to close that gap? Given that we know that child deaths from abuse and neglect are concentrated in the infant years, does the Minister believe that health visiting should be a priority area for investment in the forthcoming NHS workforce plan?

I will draw my speech to a close with a reflection on the emphasis by Maya’s family on the need for urgent action. It is frustrating to me—I am sure that it is to other Members as well, but it is perhaps particularly frustrating to a new Member of Parliament—that the landmark child protection legislation introduced by the Government, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which we voted on for the first time in January 2025, has still not completed its passage through Parliament to become law. Although proper legislative scrutiny is of course necessary, I think it is fair to say that the public do not understand why it takes so long to pass changes in the law through this place. I think MPs and peers of all parties need to reflect on how we work here and how that impacts on the pace of change that families such as Maya’s rightly demand.

When that law is enacted, what can each of us do to ensure that its changes are implemented as quickly as possible? Perhaps the Minister can say whether an implementation timescale will be published and reported back on. How quickly can we get to the point at which further changes, including a disclosure scheme bearing Maya’s name, are possible? Her family expect action, the 110,000 signatories of this petition expect action and our constituents expect action—action to ensure that fewer children are killed by abuse and neglect, action to share more information and action to develop better safeguarding systems to protect wonderful, smiling children like Maya. I look forward to hearing Members’ contributions to this important debate.

18:13

[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?

[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.

18:23

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) for introducing the debate, and my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) for her excellent speech. I pay tribute to the family of Maya Chappell, including her great-aunts, Gemma and Rachael, for their tireless advocacy on behalf of children up and down the country.

I have been contacted by constituents horrified by the tragic death of Maya Chappell in County Durham. Existing frameworks, which often focus on adult victims rather than child-specific risks, failed to protect Maya. There is clearly a gap that needs to be filled to ensure that we are protecting children from non-sexual physical abuse risks. The cost of inaction could not be higher. When the system fails to pick up on the risks facing a child, the most devastating consequences can follow and young lives can be lost. Maya’s death ought to compel us to do better to protect children.

In my constituency, more than 6,000 people signed the petition that led to this debate, which is the second highest number of signatures in any constituency in the country. I am grateful to them for using their voices to raise awareness of what happened to Maya and to prevent it from happening ever again. County Durham is a place with a proud tradition of strong communities that look out for each other. That has been demonstrated by the strength of feeling made clear by my constituents and the constituents of neighbouring MPs about this tragedy.

Today’s debate is an opportunity for Parliament to match that spirit with concrete action to safeguard children, not only in County Durham but across the country. That is why I am backing my constituents’ call for the introduction of a child risk disclosure scheme that would be similar in structure to previous steps forward in protecting people from violent crime, such as Clare’s law and Sarah’s law, but explicitly tailored to children. Such a scheme would mandate proactive information sharing among police, social services, health and other bodies about the risk of caregivers committing such awful crimes before it is too late.

Alongside more than 100,000 people across the country, this campaign is backed by the Durham police and crime commissioner, Joy Allen, and the North East Mayor, Kim McGuinness. Today, I join colleagues from the north-east of England and across the country in calling on the Government to introduce a child risk disclosure scheme, so that no family have to endure the heartbreak that Maya’s family have suffered, and we all do everything that we can to protect children.

18:26

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (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 securing this debate. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak on this issue and for the petition, which has been signed by more than 110,000 people, as we have heard. That level of support reflects the simple truth that children are still at risk of falling through the cracks despite warnings being raised by family members.

At the heart of this campaign is Maya Chappell, a two-year-old girl from Durham who should still be with us. However, in 2022, she was murdered by the partner of her mother. Subsequent medical investigations revealed that she had suffered a host of injuries including severe brain trauma and internal bleeding. She should have had the chance to grow up, to be safe and to be surrounded by the love, care and protection that every child deserves, but that was cruelly taken from her by someone who should have provided that very care. This tragedy occurred despite warnings from Maya’s father and concerns from other relatives. Social services and police both had pieces of the puzzle, yet nobody was able to put those pieces together.

Running through child safeguarding reviews is the fact that information is often kept in silos. Whether in the case of Victoria Climbié in 2000, Daniel Pelka in 2012 or Dwelaniyah Robinson, murdered by his mother in my constituency just days after Maya Chappell, agencies were aware of some of the dangers but were not aware that other agencies had concerns. That is the Achilles heel of child protection: it is rarely the case that nobody knows anything, rather that everyone knows a little bit. That is why Maya’s law matters. Too often, our safeguarding arrangements operate in a reactive way. We wait for a threshold to be crossed, or a pattern to become undeniable, but children do not get that time back. In safeguarding, to delay is to increase that risk.

The Government’s response to this petition acknowledges that. The response says that

“proactive information sharing…is critical”

and it points to wider reforms through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, including a new duty to share information and broader multi-agency changes. I welcome any step that helps agencies work together better and to protect children earlier.

The campaigners’ concern, and the concern of many of us in this place, is that those reforms still do not guarantee that risk will be proactively identified, assessed and acted upon. That is the crucial point. The Government say that the system will be better at sharing information. Maya’s family ask harder questions: better at sharing with whom, at what point, and with what urgency, when a child may already be in danger?

Maya’s campaign proposes a child risk disclosure scheme, modelled in part on the principles behind Clare’s law and Sarah’s law, but focused on the broader risk history of caregivers. It calls for stronger and clearer multi-agency protocols when child contact occurs or custody is being considered, and for professionals to be mandated to raise alerts and proactively disclose a person’s relevant history of non-sexual child abuse or neglect to a child’s parent or guardian.

Any new system must be properly designed. It must make clear who makes decisions, what threshold is applied, what information is relevant, and which agency leads on these matters.

[Robbie Moore]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. Given the experience of the Star Hobson case in my constituency, where the grandparents were instrumental, does the hon. Member agree that we need a clear flagging system of risk posed to such children, and that information should be shared not just with agencies but with key family members who are raising concerns, whether they be parents, grandparents or anyone who fulfils a guardian role?

[Mary Kelly Foy]

I wholeheartedly agree; that was about to be my next point. Of course, the information must be shared with the relevant agencies, and whenever concerns are brought to those agencies they must also be raised with family members. None of this is a reason to reject the principle; it is a reason to do the work properly. The Government have to act on what Maya’s family are saying. They must recognise that, while the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill may improve information sharing, that is not the same as proactively identifying risk and acting before harm occurs.

This debate is a tribute to Maya’s family. What they have done in turning unimaginable personal tragedy into a campaign to improve the lives of other children across the country reflects a level of bravery and compassion that we should all be in awe of. Having met Gemma and Rachael several times, I know that I am. But we cannot let this be the end of it. This debate alone does not protect one more child—now we need action. Never forget: Maya should still be here. The least we owe her, her family and every child like her is a system that does not just collect information but proactively uses it to keep children safe.

18:33

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my good and hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) from the Petitions Committee for the way in which he introduced this important debate. I also pay tribute to my good and hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist), my neighbour, for her work in leading this campaign.

I wish to register my support for the creation of Maya’s law. I do not propose to repeat the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central made in his opening remarks, but we hope for a favourable response from the Minister on the four specific asks that he set out.

Maya was living in my constituency. She was just two years old. She was living in Shotton Colliery when her life was cut short. Her death was not the result of a single unforeseeable act, but the consequence of sustained abuse. During that time there were warning signs. Concerns were raised by her father and by other family members. Questions were asked, but unfortunately the safeguarding systems that are meant to protect our most vulnerable children failed to act.

Time and again, serious case reviews into child deaths tell the same story. Information exists, but it is not shared. Risks have been identified, but not escalated. Agencies are involved, but they do not always communicate or co-operate as they should. In fact, in over 50% of serious case reviews, communication failures are cited as a primary cause. As a result, children can and do fall through the gaps between the very services that are designed to keep them safe.

Maya’s law seeks to close those gaps and to move us away from a system that too often is reactive to harm and towards one that works to prevent harm. That means ensuring that information about potential risks to children is not only gathered but shared promptly between the professionals who need it, and as was stated earlier, shared with family members who raise those concerns too, so that there is a positive feedback loop and they know that the concerns they have raised have been acted upon and are not being filed away.

The proposed child risk disclosure scheme would build on existing frameworks, such as those that allow disclosures in cases of domestic abuse or known sexual offending, but it would go further. It would recognise that the danger to children does not always come from individuals who have previous convictions. Risks can arise in many forms and are often hidden in plain sight. By enabling professionals and, where appropriate, concerned family members to access and act on relevant information, Maya’s law would provide an additional layer of protection, one that is rooted in prevention and not simply in reaction.

We must also address the issue of thresholds. Too often, intervention comes only when a risk has reached a critical or even catastrophic level. Maya’s law asks us to consider whether we are waiting too long and require too much certainty before we act to protect a child. I welcome the fact that the Government have recognised many of these challenges and that they are being addressed in legislation such as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Such legislation will strengthen information sharing and hopefully improve multi-agency working.

Those steps are important and welcome, but I believe that we must go further and be prepared to take every action necessary to better protect children. Maya’s law is not just a technical change; it represents a shift in approach and a recognition that safeguarding must be proactive, not reactive or passive. That responsibility must be shared, not siloed, and when concerns are raised about a child they must be taken seriously and acted upon, with clear legal duties for professionals to act on any sign of harm.

Of course, we must strike the right balance. Sharing sensitive information is not something to be done lightly, but where there is a credible risk to a child’s safety, we should be clear that protecting that child must always come first and be the priority. Children like Maya cannot advocate for themselves in the way that adults can; they rely entirely on the oversight, judgment and co-operation of the adults and institutions around them. When that system fails, the consequences are devastating.

Sadly, Maya’s story is not an isolated case, as other Members have identified. It reflects other tragedies that we have seen in recent years, each one raising the same question: could it have been prevented? Supporting Maya’s law means learning those lessons and, more importantly, acting on them. It means building a safeguarding system that is not only responsive but preventive. Above all, it means ensuring that when warning signs appear—as they often do, and as they did in this case—we act, so that we are never again left asking why more was not done.

I will finish by paying tribute, as many Members have, to Maya’s family and in particular her great-aunts, Gemma Chappell and Rachael Walls; I am so sorry for mixing them up earlier. They are a formidable double act, and we all admire their determination in campaigning to ensure that no other family has to endure such a loss. I am certain that this campaign will continue until Maya’s law is secure. I urge the Minister to work with colleagues across this House—this is not a party political issue, because we all agree about what needs to be done—to ensure that a child risk disclosure scheme becomes a reality at the earliest opportunity.

18:40

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. At the start of this year, I held a debate similar to this one, also in Westminster Hall, on local authority children’s services. I did so following the appalling abuse, torture and murder of a 10-year-old Woking constituent, Sara Sharif. What happened to Sara was heartbreaking for my whole community. I think that many people back home in Woking thought that what happened was so extreme and so awful that it was a one-off case. Today I have heard that it was not. This happens far too often. The circumstances of these deaths have a common theme: time and again, the state is systematically missing warning signs, and avoiding implementing formal recommendations or suggestions from petitioners that could reduce those risks. That must change.

I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) for dedicating much of her parliamentary career to improving child safeguarding; we all owe her a huge debt of thanks. I also thank the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) for the excellent way in which he introduced this e-petition debate. It is a very emotional debate, and he introduced it in a calm manner. There has been a huge outpouring of support for the campaign to fix child safeguarding issues, and the fact that the petition was signed by more than 110,000 people speaks volumes. The signatories are disproportionately from the north-east of England, and Labour Members present can be proud of their home region. Finally, I thank Gemma and Rachael for leading on the petition and ensuring not just that this petition is being debated in Parliament today but that this issue has been debated before. They are taking something that is hugely personally difficult for them and are trying to ensure that Maya has an amazing legacy.

The Liberal Democrats and I think the new disclosure and safeguarding mechanisms for at-risk children should be implemented. I am pleased to hear that we have cross-party consensus on this issue, but we need action. There is definitely a way that the state can share information better when a child is at risk, whether from a parent, a caregiver or someone else. It might be that the threshold to trigger full action is not met, but it is key to ensure that information is shared fully. A significant lack of information sharing was one of the reasons listed in the safeguarding report into Sara’s brutal murder. It was clearly an issue in Maya’s case, and it was also an issue in the Southport inquiry, which reported only today. It is a systemic issue.

I know I am meant to turn to my asks of the Minister towards the end of my speech, but I have to lead with this one. Some Ministers are responsible for cross-portfolio issues—the Security Minister for one. Does the Minister before us think that sharing information should be a cross-portfolio issue? Do the Government take it so seriously that they would task unblocking the issue to one Minister who could knock heads together across Departments?

I highlighted the case of Sara Sharif, which was a stark example of information sharing going horribly wrong. The day before she was murdered, social services went to visit her house. They went to visit the wrong house. They could have saved her. In court, the family talked about the concerns they had in Sara’s case. In Maya’s case, the family raised concerns about seeing suspicious bruises on Maya in the weeks before her death. She was a two-year-old girl. Several different relatives saw bruises on Maya, but when they flagged them with her mother, they were told that Maya caused them herself.

Maya attended two days of nursery but was then pulled out. The judge said it seemed clear that her mother feared staff would notice the bruises and report them. In the case of Sara Sharif, I have said that a parent or guardian should lose the right to home educate if there are concerns about safeguarding. That is absolutely key. Should parents lose the right to pull their child out of nursery if there are concerns about safeguarding? I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that. How can we ensure that legislation is put in place to better protect our vulnerable children?

The bruises were brushed off by the person who should have protected Maya. In Sara’s case, the judge stated that “despicable treatment” took place in “plain sight”. I heard about the lack of professional curiosity mentioned in Maya’s and Sara’s cases, and that is tragic.

A lot of Members have talked about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill making notable progress, and I am looking forward to supporting it when it finally comes back to us after being amended. The Bill is progress, but progress is not good enough when we are talking about protecting vulnerable children. It should go further and be implemented faster.

In my constituency, Ofsted reviewed Surrey county council’s children’s services just before Sara’s murder and rated it good. From what I know about child protection failings, I cannot see why it gave the council’s children’s services that rating. I have heard from special educational needs and disabilities parents who also cannot understand why the council was rated good. I am concerned about the quality of Ofsted’s investigations.

As with Surrey, the Durham Safeguarding Children Partnership commissioned a report examining the circumstances leading to Maya’s death. The report highlighted missed opportunities where agencies were meant to protect her but could have offered more support and guidance. It listed failure and missed opportunity. Durham county council’s children’s services were rated good just four months before Maya’s death. There are 66 authorities in England that are rated good. Is Ofsted good enough to protect vulnerable children if it keeps missing the warning signs?

The Minister and I have met many times to discuss child safeguarding issues. I appreciate his experience and thoughts on these issues, but we do not want to have another debate like this where other MPs raise deeply personal, traumatic things happening in their constituencies when the state saw warning signs but did not take them forward. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how we can ensure better data protection and how we can improve Ofsted.

I think all of us support Clare’s and Sarah’s laws. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are reviewing the success and impact of those laws? Once the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is eventually implemented, will the Minister agree to monitor, as a matter of urgency, how the multi-agency assessments and the registry are working? If those measures are not good enough, will the Minister agree to introduce Maya’s law?

18:49

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) for introducing this debate, and other Members for their contributions. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist), who described so movingly the circumstances leading to Maya’s death and the campaign led by her family. This important issue unites us across party lines, because it is about the safety of children and ensuring that we protect the most vulnerable members of our society. I pay tribute to the work of Maya’s family, who have called for new legislation to focus specifically on child abuse and neglect, which would seek to ensure that alarms are raised if caregivers pose a risk to children.

This petition received more than 110,000 signatures and calls for four significant changes. First, it calls for the introduction of a child risk disclosure system—CRDS—which would seek to capture a broader risk history of caregivers. Secondly, it seeks to require statutory services, including the police, social care services and health workers, to disclose relevant history to the child’s parent or legal guardian when a risk is identified. Thirdly, it seeks to establish multi-agency protocols, particularly where child contact, custody or unsupervised access are being considered. Fourthly, it seeks to empower professionals to raise safeguarding alerts and initiate family safeguarding interventions where known risks exist, even if not currently under active investigation.

Under the previous Conservative Government, several measures were introduced that provided a template for how the CRDS could work. For example, Sarah’s law was introduced in 2011, which established a child sex offender disclosure system. It allows an individual to formally ask the police whether someone who has contact with a child has a record of child sexual offences or poses a risk to the child for some other reason. In 2014, the last Government introduced Clare’s law, which established the domestic violence disclosure system, which enables the police to disclose information to a victim or potential victim of domestic abuse about their partner or ex-partner’s previous abusive or violent offending.

The shadow Solicitor General, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant), has highlighted that, in some cases, such as with the perpetrators who abused Tony Hudgell, there is a risk that they will finish serving their sentence but questions about how they will be supervised and monitored will remain following that. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) has raised the issue of information-sharing gaps with the Government. The Government need to consider how they can best support local authorities in delivering their child protection duties under section 47 of the Children Act 1989.

I hope that the Minister will agree that the priority is to ensure that all preventable abuse is indeed prevented. Given that more than half of serious case reviews cite communication failures as a primary cause, does the Minister agree that more needs to be done before an offence is committed? It should be a priority for the Government to ensure that safeguarding is co-ordinated, and that children do not fall through the cracks of the protection system. Those who are a risk to children should be monitored and managed. Can the Minister outline how the Government will ensure that safeguarding is prioritised? The UK Government’s actions need to support safeguarding data sharing, including at a local level, because we must not risk safeguarding becoming a postcode lottery where some areas are more at risk.

I very much hope that the Minister appreciates the sentiment of the tireless campaigners who brought this petition: that one death that could have been prevented is one death too many.

18:53

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) for securing this debate, and for doing so in a way that builds on the important debate held in this Chamber on 14 October, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist). I also thank all the Members who have contributed to this debate today from across different parties and have recognised the amazing young children whose lives were tragically cut far too short.

I also want to reiterate what I said on 14 October because it underpins the whole debate: no child should ever suffer at the hands of someone who was entrusted with their care and

“no family should endure such a loss.”—[Official Report, 14 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 94WH.]

I want to recognise Maya’s family, in particular Gemma and Rachael who I have had the privilege to meet and spend time with over the past few months. Their unwavering determination took the petition from more than 6,000 responses back in October to 110,000 when it closed in February. I am grateful to them for giving up their time to meet with not just me, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and officials from the Home Office. I am grateful for their ongoing, tireless campaign to bring about change.

Through their petition, they are calling for the creation of a child risk disclosure scheme known as Maya’s law, which would require statutory services to disclose relevant past history when a risk is identified, establish multi-agency responses with protocols, and empower professionals to raise alerts where known risks exist. Changes to deliver the goals of Maya’s law are, I believe, in train. We are taking a number of steps to further strengthen existing schemes and improve multi-agency working. I hope to set out in some detail how the Government are doing that.

At the moment, the Government are taking action to strengthen information sharing in particular in three separate but complimentary ways. First, through strengthening the child sex offender disclosure scheme, which been referenced throughout the debate; secondly, through the introduction of a child cruelty register, which was not something on the cards when we last had this debate in October; and thirdly, through introducing a new information sharing duty in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Those changes cover different aspects of sharing information; they are changes that will come into effect in law and some of them are new since the debate we had at the end of last year.

As referenced in the petition, Sarah’s law already allows members of the public to make an application to the police for information where they have a child protection concern, enabling the police to disclose information to those best placed to safeguard a child from harm. Although formally known as the child sex offender disclosure scheme, it extends well beyond those offences to the disclosure of any relevant information that the police hold that is necessary to protect a child. That may include previous convictions for child sexual abuse, a history of child cruelty, domestic violence or intelligence relating to violent or sexual offences. The maximum timescale for Sarah’s law applications to be completed is 28 days from start to finish unless extenuating circumstances justify an extension. Where an imminent risk of harm to a child is identified, the police must take immediate action to safeguard those at risk.

Sarah’s law does not rely solely on applications from members of the public; it also provides a framework for the police to make proactive disclosures when they believe a child is at risk of serious harm. For example, if the police become aware of an adult with a conviction, caution or charge for child abuse having unsupervised access to a child, they can and will disclose that information to the person best placed to protect that child—usually a parent, carer or guardian—whether or not a Sarah’s law application has been made.

That is the current situation, which goes far beyond just cases of child sexual abuse, but in the Crime and Policing Bill currently before Parliament the Government are going further by strengthening Sarah’s law and placing it on a statutory footing. The clauses in that Bill will mean that chief police officers will have a statutory duty to follow the Secretary of State’s guidance, which will be issued shortly after the passage of the Bill on Sarah’s law. In practice, that will reinforce and strengthen the police’s responsibility to make disclosures whenever necessary to protect a child.

In addition, the same Bill will establish a new child cruelty register. That will require adults convicted of child cruelty offences to notify the police of key changes in their circumstances in the same way that registered sex offenders need to at the moment. That improves the visibility of known risks and supports police to make informed decisions, including where disclosure under existing schemes, such as Sarah’s law, may be necessary to protect a child. At this point, I want to pay particular tribute to Tony Hudgell’s family for their campaigning on this specific change.

Finally, through our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we are addressing long-standing misconceptions about when information can and cannot be shared. We are introducing a new information-sharing duty and placing a clear legal obligation on police, children’s social care, health and other relevant agencies to share information to safeguard children. That responds directly to findings from, among others, the independent review of children’s social care, which I led before being elected to this House. It found that despite existing legislation there were both perceived and real barriers to sharing information between different agencies. We have worked closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office, practitioners and other Government Departments to ensure that the duty supports sharing across the full breadth of safeguarding or when promoting the welfare of children. That, along with the single unique identifier—which I referenced in the debate on this matter in October—will help professionals build a clearer picture of a child’s life.

Crucially, and relevant to Maya’s story, the information-sharing duty requires practitioners to share information with each other about other individuals in a child’s life where that information is relevant to safeguarding or promoting a child’s welfare. More robust information sharing will enable practitioners to act on and inform families of concerns appropriately. It also makes clear that any information that could protect a child should be shared at the earliest opportunity to prevent harm. Once the Bill is passed, I will be eager to fully involve Gemma and Rachael in the early drafts of the statutory guidance that would deliver on this commitment in the Bill. There will be an implementation plan published imminently after the Bill, and I am just as eager as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central to see that the Bill is passed soon.

I also want to underscore that there have been debates in this House about the issue of malicious allegations. These are often made and are a feature of the children’s social care system where we have complicated family circumstances and people coming forward with information that may not always be wholly accurate. With that being a large feature of some of the information that services have access to, we should note that we need to design information-sharing systems that account for those kinds of malicious allegations.

[Lewis Atkinson]

I thank the Minister for his response and the very welcome commitment that he has made to involve the family in the development of the statutory guidance. As he alludes to, family circumstances differ significantly and the person in the family best placed to keep a child safe may or may not have parental responsibility—in some cases, it may be a grandparent, an aunt or so on. Will the Minister ensure that the statutory guidance reflects that in terms of the wider disclosure beyond just parents?

[Josh MacAlister]

My hon. Friend is quite right to highlight that the question for children’s social care teams and anyone involved as a statutory safeguarding partner for these children needs to be: who is around this child who loves and cares about them? That will differ significantly among children. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) mentioned a case where it was the grandparent who was a really important part of a child’s life and was missing from the picture. We need to make sure the statutory guidance reflects that among children it will often be very different.

Strengthening child protection is this Government’s absolute priority, which means acting early so that the right support is in place before harms occur. That is why we are delivering landmark reforms by overhauling children’s social care, not just through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in the ways that I have highlighted, but with £2.4 billion of investment in changing our family help and child protection systems. We are also introducing multi-agency child protection teams, which will be mandated through the Bill, enhancing the child sex offender disclosure scheme and introducing the new child cruelty register. Together, those reforms put learning into action.

I hope to continue working with Gemma, Rachael and other family members who have been affected by these awful tragic stories to strengthen the implementation of these reforms, as well as others in the future. They reflect the loud call for change that this petition rightly demands. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central for opening this debate, and all those who have contributed to it. Let us honour Maya’s memory with not just words but change as soon as possible, so that no child is left unprotected, and no family unheard.

19:05

[Lewis Atkinson]

I thank all Members for contributing to this important and serious debate. As we can tell from the Members present, this issue has a particular north-east focus, because it was our part of the world where Maya lived and was loved, and where she was tragically killed. However, this issue is far from specific to the north-east, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster), made clear when he referred to the case of Sara Sharif. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) also made that clear.

Too many children across the whole country are killed by abuse and neglect, and I really welcome the Minister’s commitment to involving the family in the development of the statutory guidance, and the recognition that, in many cases, families come in different shapes and sizes. They sometimes have different dynamics, and social workers and other agencies need to have the professional space and time to figure out who in any family is best placed to help safeguard a child. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill delivers on the Government’s commitment to introduce a duty to share information between agencies, which is absolutely right and welcome. However, there will always be a family member who potentially has additional information. They will love the child as they are, and—no disrespect to any professionals involved—that is a key part of the safety picture for any individual child.

I welcome the Minister’s commitments on this issue. Let us hope that we can get this legislation passed, as well as the following statutory guidance, which will take us a step closer to Maya’s law and the progress and action that the family requires. I know that Gemma and Rachael wanted to ensure that Maya’s voice was heard in Parliament today, and I hope they feel that it has been. I thank all Members again, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) for the work she has done on this issue and for her contribution today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 731497 relating to a disclosure and safeguarding mechanism for at-risk children.

19:08

Sitting adjourned.