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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) on securing the debate and on the points he raised. He has been a tenacious and very determined campaigner on this matter.
Before dealing with the specifics of the Wanless review and the Dickens file, it is important to highlight that tackling child sexual abuse is a top priority for this Government. Victims should, and increasingly do, feel able to come forward to report abuse to the police and get the support they need. We have been consistently clear that when an allegation of child sexual abuse is made, whether it occurred now or in the past, it must be thoroughly investigated by the police, so that the facts can be established. Let me be clear: the Government are determined that forces should do everything they can to bring perpetrators of child sexual abuse to justice. Child sexual abuse now has the status of a national threat in the strategic policing requirement, meaning that forces are able to maximise specialist skills and expertise in both preventing and investigating allegations of offending. Police forces and police and crime commissioners must have the capabilities they need to protect children from sexual abuse.
It is sadly only too true that in the past, these horrific crimes were not always given the priority they should have had. We are appalled that abuse was allowed to proliferate in the very institutions where children should have been most protected: schools, hospitals and care homes. Child sexual abuse is now rightly centre stage as an issue that we must confront. I want to be clear—the hon. Gentleman alluded to this—that it is incredibly important that victims feel they can come forward, and will be listened to and believed.
Tackling this issue is a shared effort. The “Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation” report, published in March, sets out the national policy response to the failures seen in towns such as Rotherham, Manchester and Oxford. Collectively, the actions in that report will: strengthen accountability and leadership in professions and local government; address the culture of inaction and denial that led to victims being dismissed and ignored; improve joint working and information sharing, so that agencies intervene early; strengthen the protection of children who are at risk; reinforce law enforcement efforts to stop offenders; and provide greater support for victims and survivors. It is a wide-reaching and ambitious programme of work, driven forward at pace by an inter-ministerial group chaired by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who shares my deep personal commitment to this important work. I am sure that that broad range of activity will confirm to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that this Government are absolutely committed to learning from the failures of the past and ensuring they do not recur.
In that context, I turn to the so-called Dickens dossier and the Wanless and Whittam review, which the hon. Gentleman spoke about. It may be helpful if I set out the circumstances and findings of that review. In July 2014, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Home Office permanent secretary approached Peter Wanless, chief executive officer of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and Richard Whittam, QC, to ask them to conduct a review of two independent investigations in respect of information the Home Office received about child sexual abuse between 1979 and 1999. Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam, QC, were chosen as esteemed, highly experienced and knowledgeable individuals in the field. Their review and findings were published last November.
The Wanless and Whittam review focused in part on how the Home Office responded to information relating to the Dickens file, as well as how the police acted on any information passed to them at the time. As referenced in their report, Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam, QC, were given free access to the Home Office’s filing system. They also undertook wider searches in other Departments and agencies, and their requests were complied with. Among their conclusions was the following statement:
“It is very difficult to prove anything definitive based on imperfectly operated paper records system at 30 years remove.
Whilst a sophisticated cover up would be unlikely to leave papers in the general registry system of a major Government Department, extensive searches of paper records for the period, well beyond the Home Office itself, have not uncovered any evidence of organised attempts by the Home Office to conceal child abuse, either in specific documents retained by them or others, or through an obvious pattern of destroyed files.”
Their work shows that the original reviews did not cover anything up, and it neither proves nor disproves that the Home Office acted inappropriately. Likewise, they do not prove or disprove that public money ever found its way to the Paedophile Information Exchange, but they make clear that they saw
“no evidence to suggest PIE was ever funded by the Home Office because of sympathy for its aims.”
Wanless and Whittam made three sets of recommendations for the Home Office, all of which related to how the Department dealt with sensitive allegations, how officials passed such information on to the police, and how the details of those allegations were properly recorded. The permanent secretary accepted all three sets of recommendations, and the Home Office has undertaken considerable work to implement them in the year since the report was published.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw on locating material that he believes constitutes the so-called Dickens dossier. I am unable to offer an explanation as to why he has apparently been able to locate those documents when the Home Office has not. I can only refer to the outcome of the diligent work by Mr Wanless and Mr Whittam, who met with the hon. Gentleman during their review. I reiterate that neither they nor the previous independent reviewer were able to identify a Dickens dossier within the Department’s holdings.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for passing whatever information he has to the Metropolitan Police Service. It is not for the Home Office, or for me in my role as Minister with responsibility for preventing abuse and exploitation, to comment on or intervene in individual ongoing investigations. As such, I will not comment or speculate on what might be in those papers. It is right and proper that any material relevant to the matter or any allegation of child sexual abuse be passed to the police so that it can be properly investigated. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on doing just that. I understand the police are reviewing the documents passed to them, and I look forward to hearing the outcome.
As I said, it is vital that victims and survivors report the abuse they have suffered so that it can be investigated and the truth can be established. The Government are determined that no stone shall be left unturned in pursuit of that aim. That is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has established an independent statutory inquiry on child sexual abuse. The inquiry will challenge institutions and individuals without fear or favour, and will get to the truth. Justice Goddard is leading the inquiry’s important work, and is grasping this once-in-a-generation opportunity to expose what has gone wrong in the past and learn lessons for the future. The right place for further consideration of the Home Office’s or other institutions’ handling of the so-called Dickens dossier and other non-recent abuse allegations is the inquiry, which is free to consider evidence from any point in the past without restrictions and has the power to compel witnesses and call for evidence.
We are committed to the inquiry having the full co-operation of Government and access to all relevant information, including secret information where appropriate. Although it would not be appropriate to give a blanket undertaking that people who have signed the Official Secrets Act will not be prosecuted for reporting information relating to possible child sex abuse offences, the Attorney General gave an undertaking on 15 June that no document or evidence provided to the inquiry would result in, or be used in, any prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, or any prosecution for unlawful possession of the evidence in question.
Finally—I cannot emphasise this point enough—the Home Secretary has been clear that it is vital that the whole Government fully co-operate with the inquiry on its important work. All Departments must and will ensure that they have the systems and processes in place to do so. I assure the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that the Government are determined to uncover the truth. We must all work together to ensure that the inquiry is able to do so.
Question put and agreed to.