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3 min read2 hr

This article was commissioned by the Total Politics Impact team.

“A truly inclusive education system that works for every family.”

That is the ambitious claim made of the government’s recently announced Education for All Bill, which aims to deliver the reforms to special educational needs and development (SEND) support set out in the Schools White Paper.

The Education Committee, which I chair, undertook a major inquiry last year to understand the scale of the challenges facing children with SEND and their parents, carers and teachers, and to find evidence-based solutions.

Our report made a series of important recommendations for change, including early identification and support for children with SEND, ensuring the same level of support is available everywhere in mainstream schools and putting more support on a statutory footing, and increasing the number of state special school places so that children can be educated close to home.

I was very pleased to see many of our recommendations, based on evidence we heard from teachers, parents and carers, experts and children themselves, taken forward by government. For example, the government made early support one of its main principles for reform and strengthened the SEND offer available through Best Start Family Hubs.

But we know this will not be an easy or quick fix. My committee held an evidence session shortly after the White Paper’s publication, giving witnesses right across the education system an opportunity to respond to the proposals in detail.

Overall, our witnesses were cautiously optimistic. Many were pleased that the government had finally taken the issue head on and proposed some serious ideas for change. But it was clear that there are still several missing pieces of the puzzle.

Our witnesses raised the further steps needed to deliver a curriculum that is genuinely inclusive and flexible enough to deliver for every child. The recent curriculum and assessment review appears to be insufficient to deliver that, with more radical steps required.

There are also concerns about the scale of the resources required to transform the system.  While the government has provided additional funding, more detail is needed on the plan for implementation and the funding required to deliver this.

I was very pleased to see many of our recommendations, based on evidence we heard from teachers, parents and carers, experts and children themselves, taken forward by government

The committee was clear in our report, published last year, that what the education system needed was not tinkering at the edges but a root and branch transformation to make inclusivity the norm in every school.

Inclusion should be properly defined, given the resources needed to make it work, and leave no aspect of the life of a school untouched. We have seen first-hand how some inspiring schools are already putting this into practice. With the right support, many more could join them.

If the government’s reforms take account of the concerns raised to my committee and in response to the consultation, I’m optimistic that the Education for All Bill will make a genuine difference to the lives of children with SEND, their parents and carers and the professionals who work with them.

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

4 min read21 min

I didn’t enjoy Rivals as much as some. The problem was Rupert Campbell-Black. He is supposed to be Mrs Thatcher’s minister for sport – and I am old enough to remember Mrs Thatcher’s actual ministers for sport. 

They were, in order of their appointment: Hector Monro, Neil Macfarlane, Richard Tracey, Colin Moynihan and Robert Atkins. None of these individuals were – and this is not meant as criticism – the sort of people on whom Jilly Cooper would have based a rakish anti-hero. Indeed, of the various people Campbell-Black is said to resemble, none were MPs; you can read into that whatever you want.

Rivals is set in 1986-7, slap bang in Tracey’s period of office, but it also contains the claim that Mrs Thatcher created the role specially for Campbell-Black, a former Olympic show-jumper, thus erasing Monro and Macfarlane, as well as their predecessors Denis Howell and Eldon Griffiths. The show also makes Campbell-Black a privy counsellor, even though the post was then held by an under-secretary of state. There were many other issues with the show’s depiction of political life, but there is a danger that this column becomes similar to the time I was watching a James Graham play with my wife, helpfully informing her of things I thought they had got wrong – until she indicated, with some forceful clarity, that she was no longer desirous of such a commentary.

Still, it’s nice to see junior ministers get some limelight. Kevin Theakston began his 1987 book on the subject quoting a newspaper claim that “few people in British politics exist in such deep obscurity as junior ministers”. That book aside, there have been precious few academic studies doing very much to bring them out of the shadows. One of the exceptions, as it happens, focuses on the role of sports minister. Published in 2011, it argued the role was primarily about raising the profile of sport, rather than policymaking. It also noted that the post was a poor career move. None of the sports ministers up to that point had made it to Cabinet, something which remains true – although a number are currently in the shadow cabinet and their race is not yet run. 

One issue with studying ministers is working out what they do, and especially on which parts of their portfolio they focus. You can talk to them – the Institute for Government ran a great project doing just this – or look at what they do in Parliament. But a fascinating new piece of research published in West European Politics has instead used Transparency International’s open access record of ministerial meetings. Transparency International’s work is most often associated with studies of corruption, but it is also very useful at showing who ministers engage with. The data is available online and freely downloadable.

One issue with studying ministers is working out what they do, and especially on which parts of their portfolio they focus

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This new research looked at more than 78,000 ministerial meetings held between 2012 and 2021. The key findings of the paper – that white male ministers engaged least with equalities organisations, and that women’s organisations enjoy much greater access to ministers than organisations focused on race – is interesting in itself, but the approach offers wider possibilities.  

The data now runs up to 2026 covering over 160,000 meetings. To what extent does a change in government change the groups who enjoy direct access to ministers? With one exception, the top 10 groups to hold meetings with ministers before and after 2024 are completely different. Prior to 2024, the list included the CBI, the NFU, and the Federation of Small Businesses. Since 2024, the top 10 includes the GMB (straight in at number two, as they used to say on the radio), and Unison (which gets coded up separately as Unison and UNISON, and would in fact be ahead of the GMB if only civil servants could agree on the capitalisation). The appeal of the Local Government Association is clearly universal, as it is top in both lists.

There is, lurking in this dataset, the potential for great mischief. But there is also the potential for some great research. 

Further reading: A McMaster and A Bairner, Junior Ministers in the UK: The Role of the Minister for Sport, Parliamentary Affairs, 2012; A Christoffersen et al, Intersectionality, NGOs and executives: who has which minister’s ear? West European Politics, 2025

When to do a nestcation?

Where to go for a nestcation?

Andy Burnham is widely expected to become the next prime minister within a matter of weeks (Alamy)

4 min read20 min

A statement coordinated by the Online Safety Network, published on Wednesday, calls on Burnham to step up the government’s response to online harms, including through new legislation that would be regularly updated to keep pace with evolving technology.

The Digital Media, Data and Communications Bill, which was previously proposed by Burnham ally Lucy Powell when she was shadow digital secretary, would be scrutinised and monitored by a standing Committee of both Houses to ensure it can tackle online harms.

In the statement, seen by PoliticsHome, 47 organisations, including the NSPCC, Molly Rose Foundation, Full Fact, Internet Watch Foundation, Hope not Hate, the Fawcett Society and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, argued that the government’s approach to online safety has been “fragmented and slow” and that Ofcom’s enforcement has lacked urgency.

“The new prime minister now has an opportunity to reset the narrative, refocus the government and the regulator and show leadership internationally by taking back control from the global businesses whose pursuit of profit runs counter to the achievement of a good digital life for British citizens,” the statement said.

“The UK urgently needs a much more comprehensive and adaptive approach to online safety and AI regulation that tackles the profit-driven business model, resets the parameters for doing business in the UK, addresses the role of online advertising in fuelling content-based harms, and secures the integrity of our information environment and democracy.

“None of this is a bar to growth and innovation: good, outcome-focused regulation sets the foundation for both.”

They called on Burnham, who is expected to become PM later this month following the resignation of Keir Starmer, to “restore faith in politics” and adopt the Online Safety Network’s Safety by design code of practice.

The statement comes after the government has committed to banning children under the age of 16 from accessing certain major social media platforms, following controversy around Grok AI producing sexualised images of children and women earlier this year. 

Backbench Labour MP Jess Asato is taking legal action against xAI in the UK after Grok created sexually explicit non-consensual images of her, telling PoliticsHome that she wants the government to create a legal definition of technology-facilitated violence against women and girls to provide stronger protections against AI-generated abuse.

The signatories of the statement also criticised the move to ban under-16s from social media rather than “bolder moves to address the unsafe intentional design of those products that are the root cause of harms”. They argued that AI chatbots and social media platforms should face stronger accountability for harm caused by their products, and accused the government of having “kicked into the long grass” any regulations to allow researchers access to social media data.

Maeve Walsh, director of the Online Safety Act Network, said: “The arrival of a new PM is an opportunity for a reset of online safety policy and wider tech regulation. Civil society experts and campaigners stand ready to work with Andy Burnham to ensure his government delivers a more coherent, ambitious approach.”

Andy Burrows, Chief Executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said: “The new prime minister will inherit a patchwork of online safety measures, including a flawed ban on certain social media platforms, but this represents an opportunity to be bolder and more ambitious.

“By delivering comprehensive safety by design measures, Andy Burnham can show he is committed to standing up for UK families with solutions that work, moving beyond performative action that will not deliver comprehensive safety for young people.

“Parents are understandably crying out for change but want change that works. A Burnham Government must commit to holding big tech to account with evidence-based measures that finally make safety and wellbeing the price to pay for doing business in the UK.”

The signatories of the statement include:

1. Online Safety Act Network 
2. FlippGen 
3. Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy, University of Cambridge 
4. Gender + Tech Research Lab, University College London (UCL), Department of Computer Science 
5. End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW)  
6. Elect Her 
7. Antisemitism Policy Trust 
8. Centre for Protecting Women Online 
9. Full Fact 
10. NSPCC 
11. Molly Rose Foundation 
12. Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) 
13. The Digital Gender Harms Research Unit (DiGHRU), University of Portsmouth 
14. The Coalition to End Gambling Ads 
15. Check My Ads 
16. 5Rights Foundation 
17. Equality Now 
18. Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi)   
19. Chayn 
20. Internet Watch Foundation 
21. Womankind Worldwide 
22. Adele Zeynep Walton 
23. Clean Up The Internet 
24. My Image My Choice 
25. Thomas William Parfett Foundation 
26. Fawcett Society  
27. Shout Out UK 
28. Kick It Out 
29. Plan International UK 
30. Conscious Advertising Network 
31. The Jo Cox Foundation 
32. Dr. Elinor Carmi, City St. George’s, University of London 
33. Samaritans 
34. HOPE not hate 
35. Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) 
36. Professor Emma Short, London Metropolitan University  
37. Welsh Women’s Aid 
38. #NotYourPorn 
39. SWGfL
40. Internet Matters
41. Demos
42. Reset Tech
43. Professor Lorna Woods OBE, Emeritus Professor, Essex University
44. Save the Children UK
45. Centenary Action
46. Professor Clare McGlynn, Durham University
47. Mental Health Foundation

Andy Burnham likes a joke.

He can deliver them too, either sprinkled into his plentiful online videos or as a banter-foil to opposition jibes. Remember his cheeky smile on being told as he was sworn in as the MP for Makerfield that he wasn’t the Messiah and shot back the Python response – “naughty boy”, or the eye flutter before saying “it’s dark blue actually” after Kemi branded him “a black T-shirt and a pair of lashes”.

I make no judgement on the quality of comedy, the more important observation is that Starmer would dream of doing it, and couldn’t remotely carry it off if he tried.

I doubt the ‘King-in-the-North-in-Westminster’ will be in the chamber again for PMQs until we know it’s him on the front bench with, I’m told, quite a few new faces. In total victory he can afford to do Starmer a favour and not embarrass him by turning up- but as the lads might put it like the investiture of an ‘Archbishop of Banterbury’ – a target rich environment for Kemi Badenoch:

“I wonder if the real Prime Minister has turned up today? Where is he? Oh yes up there in the back benches. Perhaps he’d like to come down to the despatch box so I can ask him questions, otherwise this seems a waste of everyone’s time”

You get the picture.

So does this Northern cocktail of wry soliloquy and the lashes mean Burnham IS any better than Starmer?

The communication is – that wouldn’t have been hard – but the plan and the vision are potentially no better and possibly worse albeit a better told and sold story.

Perhaps Burnham’s penchant for the cheery quip and political joke is the reason he’s been the subject of one, for many years.

“A Blairite, a Brownite, a Milibandian, and a Corbynite walk into a pub and the landlord says, “what’ll it be Andy?”

Burnham has a such a long history of flexibility in his political postures he could host yoga sessions in this new Number 10 North.

And given political nerds like myself forget he’s not a household name in normal households (outside Manchester) when it comes to Andy Burnham the man, the myth, the Mancunian messiah the British public are entitled to steal a line from Nigel Farage’s ‘low grade bank clerk, damp rag speech:

“Who ARE you?”

Because given the authors of Labour’s soap opera look like writing “Our Andy” into the lead role in Coronation Street, we are entitled to ask which Andy Burnham has turned up on set.

The public ought to know, opposition parties want to know, and the media want to find out.

Burnham it seems is not so keen on the latter. That is his first mistake.

Twenty six and a half years ago the Labour Party made the same mistake at the opening of the Millenium Dome. Oh I know this Tory idea -project managed by New Labour was a famous white elephant, right? Well maybe, but part of that narrative that embedded with the public, was from a relentless negative review from the media from the start. Why? Because on a near freezing, drizzling New Years Eve 1999 the press were held for two hours outside before gaining entry.

Keep the media out, treating them mean, is a risky business.

Burnham has avoided their questions and whilst some privately supportive but publicly neutral old guard commentators have explained his Manchester speech would have been overshadowed with a Q&A:

Who will your Chancellor be? Does he feel sorry for Keir Starmer  having ousted him? Will he be calling an election, given he advocated for one when the Tories swapped PMs like intoxicated 10 year olds on an 80’s Noel Edmond’s kids show?

It makes internal Comms sense. Shut it down and manage the message you want. Fair enough, but first, like on Millenium Eve don’t make the lobby angry and second, they and the British people deserve to see their probable next PM subjected to rigorous questioning.

Indeed the increasingly frustrated Speaker should probably insist MPs get to grill him first, as Badenoch has suggested – perhaps he should do a pre-recess PMQs?

Because we are entitled to more than the carefully crafted cheeky chap with his dress down bonhomie but answers to politically serious questions about Britain’s future and his plans for shaping that.

Yes, he gave a speech which Oliver Dean drilled into yesterday but for me a lot of it sounded like a poor pastiche of Oasis and Beetles lyrics. Know what else has dark eyes and long lashes? The Walrus.

Interpretations of what exactly he was advocating have varied from an answer to the assumptions of the 80’s and Thatcherism the promise of council house building and the like to a geographic repositioning of the distribution of power in the UK.

Perhaps the most intriguing was the reaction from aides in Starmer’s-still number 10 that apart from hiving off part of the wheel house of U.K. power and moving it to Manchester, they are reported to have said “we were doing much of this already”

Here’s where the Tories come in, rightly nervous, whatever Kemi says about election readiness – and they aren’t – they have options here. Either it is just a differently told version of the same, which mark my words will not cut it, or it’s really different sounding but fails on the same central issue.

Burnham came across as a man with a plan built of slogans. Detail was thin and the costings, and money details non-existent. Like a major speech rich on words but pumped full of policy Monjarro. Enough big questions remain to make observers queasy.

That’s why not letting people, including the markets, know now who the Chancellor will be if Reeves is off matters. How he pays for this plan and who the Robbing to his Batman is going to be is a vital part of judging what is about to happen.

He’s had to swallow the thin gruel of the Defence Investment plan unveiled by a vanishing Prime Minister clutching at legacy life rafts which only escapes John Healey’s charge of being too little too late by two weeks and £1.5bn. There are big holes still that Burnham will have no choice but to fill, and explain how.

If he truly wants cross party consensus, he should accept the Conservative offer of votes to support welfare reform.

Then there’s the move to Manchester so our new leader can truly be the King in the North, but I doubt the actual King will ride forth for weekly meetings. If the Monarch won’t go the Mancunian, then the Mancunian must go to the Monarch, in London.

But the biggest issue of all is the motivation for this northern devolution revolution.

It’s about growth.

We are back via tackling child poverty, protection of women and girls, through Chagos, trade deals and national security to economic growth as the Government’s “number one priority”

So far nothing Burnham has said convinces he isn‘t either going to have to raise tax or borrow more. Or both. That’ll put ‘hope in your hearts’

He talked of creating economic growth via the apparatus of the state, albeit devolved to the local level.

The new order is to be an attractive environment for the private sector to be co-opted into. But that ignore the fundamental, that economic growth will only come from the private sector, flourishing not from nationalising, state controlling, largely  unaccountable metro mayors. And by the way the most successful metro mayors know this.

Manchester is pointed to as growing under Burnham’s reign there, but it’s far from certain that he can translate that across a nation.

A Labour MP was at pains to tell me that Burnham isn’t ultimately destined to be like the glossy progressive hope of Canada’s Justin, glitzily successful until becoming the unpopular steward of a bloated welfare state.

It’s true though.

(Credit: Adobe Stock)

For a long time, the UK has been grappling with some big questions about energy. How do we responsibly develop an energy supply that tackles climate change? How do we best take control of our energy system and achieve energy security in a volatile world? How do we build an energy system that delivers value for the UK and for consumers – and that is, ultimately, affordable?

Last year, with the release of a report from the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce led by John Fingleton, another question received greater focus. By looking at the nuclear sector specifically, and the regulatory burden currently placed upon it, the report asked us to consider how we wanted to build our energy infrastructure in Britain.

It’s an important question, and it’s one that has numerous implications for many of the other big questions we’re asking about energy. For nuclear specifically, it has implications for the cost and efficiency of the projects we build here in the UK. It has implications for how those projects deliver for the communities and the environment in which they’re based. And it has implications for how regulation functions.

How we build our energy infrastructure projects really matters.

Long before the release of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce report, we’d been thinking hard about this question at Sizewell C. As a replica of the Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear power station in Somerset, we already have the answer to what we’re building. Thanks to HPC, we have unprecedented design certainty: we know the quantities of materials we need, and we have a readymade supply chain to build them.

Sizewell C will power six million homes a year for the next sixty years and deliver £2bn a year in energy system savings

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That gives us a unique advantage to think more about the question of how we build. Without the need to grapple with countless design changes in flight, we have an incredible opportunity to be innovative, to learn from the rapidly developing lessons of HPC, and to build on the accumulating advantages they’re realising from Unit 1 to Unit 2.  

We’ve already put many of these innovations and learnings into practice – from developing more modularisation and prefabrication to more off-site storage and manufacture, more digitisation and more use of AI.

We’re thinking differently about how our project interacts with and benefits the local environment: we’ve built three nature reserves around our site, for example, which are already three times the size of the permanent footprint of the power station.

We’re thinking differently about jobs and skills development, about how we can ensure that people and businesses in the UK benefit from our project – that’s why we’ve committed to delivering 70 per cent of the project’s construction value to the UK, and announced plans to build a permanent post-16 college, apprentice hub and centre of excellence.

And we’re thinking differently about how we build Sizewell C in a way that least disrupts the communities around us and that leaves the greatest legacy once it’s complete: that means, for example, delivering 60 per cent of materials by rail and sea to minimise disruption on the roads, and building new rail and road infrastructure that will improve accessibility and safety in Suffolk for generations to come.

All of these innovations on how we build have the aim of either reducing cost, accelerating the pace of delivery, improving safety, or delivering better outcomes for local communities and the environment.

However, from the outset, it’s also been clear that we face complex regulatory frameworks in our sector with inflexibilities – legislative or cultural – built into the system. For us, it was clear that a culture change was needed: a culture in which regulators and industry are encouraged to innovate and feel safe to adopt more flexible and proportionate approaches to regulation and delivery, focused on safety outcomes and protection of the environment.

There is significant headroom for change here – and this is where the outcomes of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce report come in. The report is an important catalyst for our sector, setting out a framework that will help us to go further in creating regulatory efficiencies, more savings opportunities and better value for the UK.

As a replica project and the most recent nuclear power construction project in the UK, Sizewell C has a unique role to play in showcasing some of the report’s recommendations. We can be a lighthouse project, highlighting the value of putting the recommendations into action and demonstrating how the UK can set a template for efficient, predictable and repeatable nuclear construction.

There are several areas where we see significant opportunity – and where we’re already taking action. We’re instilling a culture that values outcomes over unnecessary processes. We’re addressing complex bureaucracy to enable faster, outcome-focused decisions and delivery, removing duplication, creating more automation and simplifying governance processes to manage change. We’re assessing over-specification with the aim of removing unnecessary measures from non-safety critical systems and ‘gold-plated’ solutions – identifying innovative approaches to improve cost efficiency and productivity gains. We’re pushing for better ways to align our supply chain with our target delivery outcomes – and to increase the efficiencies in the way we contract and incentivise delivery.

We’re also working with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA) to progress a number of pilot opportunities that will help our project avoid or reduce costs, improve environmental outcomes, deliver at greater pace and provide better overall value to consumers.

Earlier this year, for example, Defra announced that the EA will take the helm as our Lead Environmental Regulator for a pilot, acting as a single point of contact to co-ordinate streamlined, joined-up advice and smooth the regulatory process. It gives us a simple framework to build on our already constructive relationship with the EA – and demonstrate how regulation can work more effectively and efficiently for both project delivery and environmental protection. We now have an Environment Agency Officer who is regularly on site too, which means immediate communication and immediate attention to issues and opportunities.

We’re also working closely with the ONR to discuss changes in regulation and standards that could impact our delivery schedule and add cost to our project. If certain standards are safe enough for HPC, for example, why add millions in cost and risk delays to Sizewell C to make changes with negligible benefits with no material impacts on quality or safety? We have already agreed with the ONR that replication is the safest route forward – we are now working with them to ensure replication is implemented in practice. We have no doubt that the approaches we establish here will shape the construction of both future large-scale and small modular reactors.

We’re already seeing the significant positive potential of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce report at our project. To ensure there is cross-industry action, however, the support from the government is vital – to help implement the report’s recommendations, to join up national infrastructure projects, and to ensure that the supply chain and consumers see projects like ours as vital national endeavours that deliver on our economic and security goals.

After all, there is no doubt about the benefits of what we are building: Sizewell C will power six million homes a year for the next sixty years and deliver £2bn a year in energy system savings. With the implementation of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce recommendations, and with a unified approach of industry, regulators, supply chain and government, we have a big opportunity to set the template for how we build too. The impacts could be felt for generations to come.