Westminster Hall
3 September 2026
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Westminster Hall House of Commons
00:26 - 01:02
Speaker 2
Order, order. We begin with the select committee statement. Peter Swallow will speak on the publication of the second report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Human Rights of Children in the Social Care System in England, HC 161, for up to 10 minutes, during which no intervention may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call members to put questions on the subject of the statement and call Peter Swallow to respond to these in turn. Questions should be brief and members may ask only one question each.
I call Peter Swallow on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
01:02 - 03:23
Speaker 1
Thank you, Madam Chair, it's an honor to serve under you in the chair and can I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting this statement and to my fellow members of the Human Rights Committee for asking me to make it. I'm also very grateful to my honorable friend the Children's Minister for attending this statement as he knows, I never, I never miss an opportunity when I see him to raise the progress of my local SEND school, but I thought I'd get it in right at the start so I can focus on what we're actually here to talk about today, the very, very important matter of children's social care. This statement sets out the work done and the recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on children's human rights in the social care system in England, and it goes without saying that the state's ability to intervene into families to remove children where and only where it is deemed absolutely necessary for a child's welfare in the first instance is amongst the gravest and most serious of its responsibilities. But the responsibility the state then takes over that child and how they are cared for next is equally as serious and has the capacity to shape the rest of that child's life. No parliamentary speech can truly do justice to the experiences of the care-experienced young people the committee spoke to in Leeds and York and at our roundtable in Parliament during the work of putting together this report.
What we heard from them will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I want to extend the committee's sincere thanks to each and every one of them for giving voice to their experiences in this work. I hope they see their voice reflected in the recommendations we have made. Many of the young people I spoke to were curious about how a select committee inquiry works, but also skeptical that anything they may say could possibly hope to have a difference over the social care system in the UK. I hope this skepticism may prove unfounded, and I take by the fact that my honorable friend the Minister for Children is in his place today that he is willing to listen to these young people's experiences. If I could summarize all that the committee heard in one sentence it would be this.
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