#SafeguardingAllChildren #GE2024Hustings

With many of us feeling politically homeless, we emailed candidates standing in the 2024 General Election on 4^th July 2024 to ask if they would pledge to support 4 key safeguarding pledges. We chose more than 15 English regions, running to 198 constituencies, to ascertain if they would answer ‘yes’, ‘no’, or maybe ‘don’t know’ to the following:

1. The Cass Review Final Report 2024 in full
2. The Gender Questioning Children Guidance for Schools as of December 2023
3. The Relationships and Sex Education Review 2024 as statutory guidance
4. Full safeguarding of all children as per Keeping Children Safe in Education 2024

The regions we surveyed were the Tees Valley, North Yorkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Bristol, Cumbria, Lancashire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, North Central London, Kent, Norfolk, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and the Black Country. 

Our hustings focused on the 5 main parties – The Conservative Party, The Labour Party, The Liberal Democrat Party, The Green Party and the Reform Party. We used all the email addresses we could find and emailed most candidates at least twice as we knew they would be very busy. Some of them replied before their party manifestos were released and some responded by asking us to interpret their manifestos. None of the manifestos directly referenced the Keeping Children Safe in Education 2024 statutory guidance. Please see our colleagues Transgender Trend’s commentary on the manifestos – https://www.transgendertrend.com/political-party-manifestos-general-election-2024/

See our summary of the responses recieved from MP’s now in parliament here.

Find your region and constituency, and the candidates’ responses below:

Key Constituencies

Bedfordshire

Bristol

Cumbria

Cornwall

Derbyshire

Devon

Dorset

Essex

Gloucestershire

Hertfordshire

Kent

Lancashire

Norfolk

North Central London

North Yorkshire

Staffordshire and The Black Country

Tees Valley