For seven years, my youngest constituents were abused at Bright Horizons nursery in West Hampstead, London. Earlier this year, Vincent Chan was jailed for 18 years for his horrific crimes.
It is every parent’s worst nightmare to discover that their child has been subject to abuse. For this to have happened in a nursery, where parents trusted their children would be safe, is truly abhorrent. Tragically, many families will probably never know whether their child was a victim. The lack of evidence about what was happening in the nursery, in the rooms where Chan was in charge, means that some parents have been left only with questions.
A group of 200 locally affected parents have come together to call for mandatory CCTV in nurseries, as well as requiring Ofsted to review such footage in all inspections. Together we have met the previous education secretary and the previous early years minister, and gave evidence to an expert panel to assess the feasibility of mandatory CCTV in nurseries. With none of these ministers still in post, we must not lose momentum.
All the parents I have met are truly inspirational, given everything that they’ve been through, and are doing all they can to stand up for their little ones.
Alongside the parents of Genevieve Meehan in Manchester (Parents of baby girl killed at nursery fear unsafe sleeping ‘rife’ in sector across England, 9 August), and the Lullaby Trust, I am urging Andy Burnham, the new prime minister, to take heed of our campaign, to strengthen the safety and regulation of nurseries.
With 20,000 reports of serious childcare incidents in English nurseries in the past five years, we need mandatory CCTV to tackle this. While it may not be the magic bullet, in several cases across the county – from Bristol and Manchester to Twickenham in London – CCTV would have caught the perpetrators earlier and saved children from harm.
More broadly, parents are calling for an improved inspection and accountability framework of early years settings after concerns were repeatedly ignored by nursery staff and regulators. Babies and toddlers are the most vulnerable people in our society, and we must do all we can to protect them from harm.
Tulip Siddiq MP
Labour, Hampstead and Highgate
