Member

I will take my amendments together, because they express a single approach. Amendments 164B and 164C concern escalation. The central question is simple: should escalation be automatic, or should it be a considered decision? As drafted, the Bill leans towards automaticity: conditions A, B, C and D are met and the authority must act. My amendment restores judgment. It requires consideration of necessity, proportionality, the child’s best interests and whether the same aim could be achieved in a less intrusive way. When escalation becomes routine, it stops being a safeguard and it becomes a process, a tick box: processes move people along, but they do not look at them. I think this is already happening in our child services system.