More than 100,000 people have signed a petition demanding a national inquiry into the death of 13-month-old Preston Davey, with supporters including singer Ellie Goulding and Carrie Johnson, wife of the former prime minister.
The petition, titled “Preston Davey deserved better. Demand a national inquiry”, was launched on June 18 by the Blackpool Gazette and the Lancashire Post on the change.org platform. It has drawn backing from Blackpool South MP Chris Webb and Preston’s birth parents, Sarah Davey and Gary Nolan, as well as the high-profile figures. Mr Webb described each signature as “a signal to the government that the public wants answers about what happened to Preston Davey”.
The call for a national inquiry centres on what the petition describes as “the safeguarding failures that cost Preston his life”. It poses a series of specific questions, including why repeated warning signs — three hospital admissions, the abuser’s admission of dark thoughts, and regular social worker contact — were not acted upon. The petition also asks whether children placed outside their home authority should automatically be assigned a local social worker with direct oversight, how repeat hospital admissions for children in care are shared between the NHS, the placing authority and the local authority, and whether adoption vetting procedures are rigorous enough to prevent prospective adopters from hiding behind a false front.
Preston died on July 27, 2023. He had been taken into the care of Oldham Council five days after his birth, on June 16, 2022, under an emergency care order. For the first nine to ten months of his life he lived with foster carers Sandra and Paul Cooper, who described him as healthy and happy. In January 2023, Jamie Varley, 37, a former secondary school teacher, and his partner John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, an ex-public schoolboy who worked as a financial sales manager, were approved for adoption by the regional agency Adoption Now. They met Preston in February 2023 and adopted him on April 1, 2023.
Abuse and sentencing
Preston Crown Court heard that Varley inflicted “unremitting abuse” on the child before a final, fatal sexual assault. Varley was convicted of murder, two counts of assault by penetration, five counts of child cruelty, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault of a child, and offences relating to indecent images of a child. He received a whole-life term, meaning he will never be eligible for parole. McGowan-Fazakerley was jailed for 25 years, to serve at least two-thirds of that sentence, after being convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child, two counts of child cruelty, and one count of sexual assault.
During the trial it emerged that Preston suffered approximately 40 non-accidental injuries, including bruising to his mouth, throat, bowel and bladder, and a healing fracture to his left arm. Varley took indecent images and videos of Preston, which were found on his phone and shared with McGowan-Fazakerley. The court heard that despite Preston being taken to Blackpool Victoria Hospital three times in the months before his death — including once with a broken arm — and regular visits from social workers, concerns were not escalated. A safeguarding review found that hospital staff missed critical signs, including ignoring an old bruise on his forehead during one visit and failing to ask how it happened. That visit occurred the day before another child, Damion Russell, who also had bruising and was later murdered, was seen at the same hospital.
Reports indicate that on at least nine occasions, medical or safeguarding professionals were alerted to concerns about Preston, yet no alarm was raised. Some reports refer to up to eight missed opportunities for intervention, and a review highlights “nine key moments” in Preston’s life where safeguarding failures may have occurred. A supervising social worker noted concerns after Preston’s third hospital visit but ultimately concluded there was no issue, as the family “presented as perfectly at ease and very affectionate towards each other”. The children’s commissioner for England, Rachel De Souza, described Preston’s murder as a “massive safeguarding failure” and a “failure of state safeguarding”.
Government response and ongoing reviews
Speaking in the House of Commons last week, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson pledged to do “everything within our power” to prevent another child facing the same fate as Preston. She committed to rolling out new safeguards in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 by March. The Act, which received Royal Assent in April 2026, introduces a new duty to share information between schools and social services when a child’s safety is concerned, even without parental consent, and includes provisions for better support for children in care and stricter regulations for care workers.
Ms Phillipson told MPs: “Our thoughts must be with all of those who loved and knew Preston, and it is right that the evil abusers that committed these sickening and shocking crimes are now behind bars.” She added that she had asked independent experts to review Oldham Council, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and the regional adoption agency “to look carefully at all of the issues and concerns that have been raised through this process”. A child safeguarding practice review is under way, led by the local safeguarding partnership with the national child safeguarding practice review, which she said would ensure it “is of the highest quality”.
A separate independent child safeguarding practice review has been confirmed by Oldham Council following Preston’s death. The council had previously commissioned an independent review into historic safeguarding practices in November 2019, but that review focused on historical allegations of child sexual exploitation. Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has started its own inquiry into what emerged during the criminal trial. A Care Quality Commission report from May 2026 rated the trust’s urgent and emergency services as “inadequate” and noted that not all staff felt secure to raise concerns, with a “keeping your head down culture” and systemic bullying reported in a leaked document from December 2025.
MPs Chris Webb and Andrew Snowden are calling for a full public inquiry, rather than the current local reviews. Alongside the petition, a campaign known as “Preston’s Law” has been launched to improve safeguarding for adopted children. It proposes a “Preston Trigger”, under which two independent safeguarding concerns would automatically trigger an urgent safeguarding review, and calls for mandatory, structured safeguarding follow-ups for adopted children for at least two years.
Ms Phillipson concluded: “We can’t bring Preston back, but we can make sure that we do everything within our power to stop this happening to other children in future.”
