The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) not just on starting the debate in such a knowledgeable way, but on their long-standing contributions on this hugely critical issue. I apologise in advance: I will try to deal with as many issues as possible that have come up, but in 10 minutes I suspect that I will not get to the bottom of what is a very large pile.
It goes without saying that child protection is an absolute priority for this Government and we are committed to ensuring that children receive the protection they need. Child sexual exploitation is an abhorrent form of child abuse, no matter how, when or where it occurs. It is good that these important issues are centre stage because where child abuse takes place the effects on the victim can be lifelong and devastating. It is vital, therefore, that victims feel empowered to come forward to report abuse and that when they do, they receive the support they need to recover from the trauma of this hateful crime.
Many Members on both sides of the House have rightly highlighted the responsibility we all have to ensure that we learn the lessons from the terrible cases that have happened in the past few years and that are still emerging. People need to have confidence that we are getting to the truth. Again it goes without saying that anyone who has any information about child abuse or anyone who has suffered abuse, whether now or in the past, should report it to the police.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) raised the issue of the various responsibilities in central Government. The Department for Education is the lead Department for child safeguarding as a whole. That remains so and my hon. Friend the children’s Minister is here for this debate. Given the recent surge in cases of child sexual abuse, the Prime Minister has asked me to lead the national group tackling sexual violence against children and vulnerable people across Government. Therefore, although the cross-Government co-ordination function on child sexual exploitation has transferred to the Home Office, the DFE is, as I say, the lead Department for child safeguarding as a whole.
I will come on to the national group’s work in a moment but I want to deal with the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham about whether we need an overarching public inquiry. I am happy to keep an open mind on that, but my main priority is that in any of the agencies that are tackling child sexual exploitation no one’s energy and attention should be diverted from the urgent work and changes that need to be taking place now. We need to be learning lessons from the inquiries and investigations that have concluded and that are still going on. The deputy Children’s Commissioner has done valuable work and an extension of her report will come out in the next couple of months.
Andrea Leadsom
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as many hon. Members have pointed out, we have been through this so many times—my first experience of speaking in this place was in 2003 on the day that the Victoria Climbié report came out—but nothing changes?
Damian Green
I hope that I will be able to explain to my hon. Friend and the House that a lot is changing and in particular a lot has changed as a result of the setting up of the national group, which is made up not just of various Government Departments but the delivery agencies, the inspectorates, the police and the voluntary and community sectors, which are particularly valuable. It has a core focus on reducing the vulnerability of victims, reducing the risks from abuse of authority and power and improving our systems in dealing with these crimes, as well as strengthening local accountability. Helped by members of the group such as the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and Rape Crisis, the group is taking the lessons learnt from recent inquiries and police investigations. It has identified nine areas for action, four of which I have said should receive particularly urgent attention. Since the group was established last April, we have already made progress in these priority areas.
In July this year I launched the progress report and action plan for the national group, together with our early findings on multi-agency safeguarding approaches. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and others that the multi-agency safeguarding hubs are doing good work to help local areas put in place effective arrangements. I agree with those who said that what happens in local areas will make a difference to children. The MASH that I visited in Staffordshire is certainly doing excellent work in ensuring that there are no cracks through which children can fall.
Damian Green
I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. If I keep giving way, I will not get through any of the responses that I want to make to points that have been made.
It is reasonable to ask what the national group has achieved. We have issued new guidance for consultation on protecting children who go missing or run away from home or care. On the policing side, the College of Policing and the Director of Public Prosecutions have launched a public consultation on revised guidance for sexual violence victims. It was launched in June and runs until September. Although we are still consulting, the new guidance is already in effect, which is critical if we are to move the focus of investigations away from testing the credibility of victims to testing the credibility of the allegation and ensuring that the police listen to victims.
In the criminal justice system, we have improved the experience of victims by launching the new criminal justice strategy, which includes significant measures to improve the court process for victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. As the hon. Member for Stockport acknowledged, later this year we shall be piloting measures for recorded pre-trial cross-examination of vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. I agree with her that it is important that victims do not have terrible experiences in court.
On the online front, leading companies have pledged £1 million to the Internet Watch Foundation, which will strengthen the work that it is doing in tandem with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre to identify child abuse images.
On wider child protection reform, on 21 March this year we published statutory guidance entitled “Working together to safeguard children”, and we have strengthened the role of local safeguarding children boards in holding the local agencies to account, providing funding to the association of independent LSCB chairs to drive forward that improvement and share good practice across the network. We are also continuing to drive improvements in the quality of serious case reviews so that the system learns from past mistakes.
I was asked whether there would be a review of what went wrong in Oxford and Operation Bullfinch. The LSCB in Oxford has commissioned a serious case review to learn the lessons and will ask precisely what went wrong and make sure that it does not happen again.
I was asked about hotels and bed and breakfasts. Earlier this week, I attended the launch by the National Working Group Network charity and the Children’s Society of a new toolkit for local practitioners, which I think will be useful.
The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) raised the Daniel Pelka case. We have strengthened arrangements for serious case reviews and we will see what the case review has to say next week. On the issue of child protection at a local level, everyone who works with children obviously has responsibility. The hon. Gentleman asked whether, if everyone has responsibility, no one has responsibility. That is why the local safeguarding children boards have the key and central role and why we have sought to strengthen them.
Various hon. Members have called for mandatory reporting of concerns. There is already a clear framework in place for all who work with children to report concerns. The statutory guidance is clear that immediate referral should be made to a children’s social worker if there is concern about a child. So I hope I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) that already in a few months many changes have been made.
Points have been made about culture in the context of Christian Churches and of groups of often predominantly Pakistani heritage men grooming and abusing white British girls. It is worth saying that political or religious sensitivities must not get in the way of preventing and uncovering child abuse. The same laws apply to all of us in this country whatever our background, religion or ethnic origin. There are no excuses for anyone committing this disgusting crime. The vetting and barring arrangements apply to those who are working in a faith context as much as anyone else; I can assure hon. Members of that.
I thank the many Members who have contributed to a serious and very good debate.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Can I sit the Minister down? It is now 3.30 pm and we should have started the next debate. I am sorry that there are not two more minutes for winding up.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered child protection in the UK.