Nov 7th, 2016
Child Protection – People powered opinion poll
By Robin Priestley
Already over 100,000 of us have signed the petition to make sure that councils aren’t allowed to opt out of vital child protection laws.
The house of Lords is due to debate the bill on Tuesday, so 38 Degrees members have chipped in to commission an independent polling company to run a public opinion poll. This way when Lords walk into the debating chamber they’ll be armed, not just with our huge petition, but also a real measure of public opinion.
It’s the public consultation that the government never ran.
We’ve just had the results back in and they back up our campaign completely!
Here’s the question we asked:
“At the moment, all local councils follow the same law when it comes to the care and protection of vulnerable children. Some say that this is inflexible and does not allow councils to “innovate” to improve the care and protection of vulnerable children. Others say that changing the law will create different standards of care for vulnerable children across the country, leading to some children not receiving the care they need. Which of the following statements is closest to your opinion?”
and here are the results:
66.4% – Councils should all follow the same law when it comes to the care and protection of vulnerable children
18.0% – Councils should not all follow the same law when it comes to the care and protection of vulnerable children
15.6% – Don’t know
The results back up exactly what our petition says. 2/3 people are against the government plans. In fact less than 2/10 people support them!
Here’s the full results: