Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 14 January 2026

Debate

Contribution

My Lords, in 1987, I chaired an inquiry called the Cleveland child abuse inquiry. One of the aspects of it was the deliberate refusal in those days to provide information about 120-odd children. This had disastrous consequences, because they were removed from home and many had to be sent back, whether or not they had, in fact, been abused. During my years as a family judge, again and again the cases that came before me did so because, at the level of dealing with children’s safeguarding, there was a lack of communication and, consequently, a lack of action. What is unbelievably sad is that, since I retired many years ago, this has continued. We have had endless reports of the death of a child, and one of the reasons for that is that people had information that was not passed to somebody else and, consequently, there was no action. Therefore, I very much support Amendment 19.

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