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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, the words of my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby show to the House how warmly we support the objective of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, and how much we pay tribute to her for the tenacious way in which she has addressed the matter and how she has tried to address the various concerns expressed in your Lordships' House. In particular, I am grateful to her for how she has addressed some of the concerns that I have expressed. We owe the noble Baroness a great debt of gratitude because the way in which she has raised this issue to the public eye has put a great deal of pressure on the media—those who have any tendency to be irresponsible. We all agree that none of us wants the child’s rights to be counterbalanced with the right of an innocent person not to be vilified in the media. It is the responsibility of any of us, if we see the media being irresponsible in how they address such matters, to write to them or to speak on the media in abhorrence of such behaviour—or to withdraw our support from newspapers. Such behaviour is simply not on. However, the noble Baroness has not addressed just one of our concerns in tabling the amendment. That is the fact that we feel that now is not the moment to put the provision on the statute book. We have a new set of measures introduced by Jim Knight; we have some new allegations management officers put in place; we have new guidance. I would be right behind the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, if, in a year's time, we find that those measures have had no effect and we come back to the Government to hold them to account for that but, in fairness, we have to give them a chance. Therefore, I shall not support the amendment.