Education secretary says plan to block legislation with call for another inquiry is ‘absolutely sickening’

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The Conservatives’ push for a new national grooming inquiry that would block the child safety bill is “absolutely sickening”, Bridget Phillipson has said.

The education secretary said the opposition party’s plan to amend the government’s children wellbeing and schools bill on Wednesday, which she called the “single biggest piece of children safeguarding legislation in a generation”, would “kill it stone dead”.