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”.

The amendment Kemi Badenoch’s party will bring forward will call for ministers to establish a “national statutory inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation, focused on grooming gangs”.

It follows Elon Musk’s calls for a new inquiry into child grooming gangs, even though an independent investigation led by Prof Alexis Jay concluded its work in 2022.

Former chair of child abuse inquiry says another one would only delay action

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None of its recommendations have been enacted, but Keir Starmer has vowed to do so instead of launching a new inquiry. His decision has been backed by Jay, who led the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. The expert said “the time has passed” for another lengthy examination of grooming gangs.

Phillipson told Times Radio: “They come along today as we set out legislation to protect the very children they claim to care about and they intend to block it and kill it stone dead. It is absolutely sickening.”

She added: “We are looking right across the recommendations that Alexis Jay set out and there are crucial recommendations from the review that she carried out.

“That’s why today we are setting out legislation that addresses many of the wider challenges that we see right across our system. It’s why the home secretary announced in the House of Commons the action that we are taking.

“So we are wasting no time in legislating to keep children safe. The question for the Conservatives today is why they are intent on blocking this landmark piece of child protection legislation that would keep the very children safe that they claim they are concerned about.”

While the amendment for a new inquiry is not likely to gain enough support, given Labour has a huge majority in the Commons, if it did it would slow the progress of the bill, which includes measures aimed at improving safeguarding for children.

The bill, if passed, will mean parents no longer have an automatic right to take their children out of school for home education if the young person is subject to a child protection investigation or suspected of being at risk of significant harm.

Phillipson’s comments came as the children’s commissioner for England joined the debate about grooming gangs and child sexual abuse, urging the government to “go much further, faster”. Dame Rachel de Souza said she would support “any further investigation considered necessary to uncover the scale and scope of failings, where any new evidence emerges”.

She acknowledged steps already being taken by ministers to better protect children. She said: “I welcome the commitments already made by the government and the landmark legislation being taken through parliament in the form of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill – but this is the moment to go much further, faster.”

De Souza has written to Phillipson and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, setting out her priorities on child protection. “Our collective ambition must be to listen to what child victims have told us, through their testimonies to the Jay inquiry, as well as through my own research, and get on with the hard task of acting in response. We must also take action now. Change for hundreds of thousands of children can’t come soon enough.”

Keir Starmer has also warned Conservative MPs not to back the amendment, saying it prioritises “the desire for retweets over any real interest in the safeguarding of children”.

Starmer told the Mirror: “No MP should be voting down children’s safeguarding measures. It’s shocking they are even thinking about this as a tactic.

“It’s the elevation of the desire for retweets over any real interest in the safeguarding of children.”

Responding to Labour’s refusal to launch an inquiry, Musk, the billionaire owner of X, on Wednesday called the prime minister “Starmtrooper”, accusing him of trying to cover up “terrible things”.

The shadow education secretary, Laura Trott, said a national inquiry into grooming gangs should be considered “without calling each other names”.