Child Migration Programmes (Child Abuse)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I thank the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for securing the debate. It is difficult for me to disagree with anything she said. It is four months since the report came out and, dare I say it, we are all a bit distracted by the soap opera that is Brexit, which means that on some of these issues the eye has been taken off the ball. One reason I am grateful to her, therefore, is that this debate helps me to focus some of my colleagues’ minds. She alluded to the fact that this issue affects not just my Department and that we need agreement across Government. I thank her for the opportunity to say where the Department of Health and Social Care is on the issue.

I am pleased to hear that some of the child migrants are watching the debate with interest. I would like to convey to them that we are taking this seriously and will respond to the issues raised in the report. I thank the hon. Lady for showing such interest and passion in speaking on their behalf, because they deserve our support.

I do not think anyone in the Chamber disagrees that the child migration policy was so misguided and harmful and caused such suffering and distress. For us as Members of Parliament in the 21st century, it beggars belief to think that any British Government could think that was a reasonable policy. It clearly caused great suffering and distress to children, who should be protected by institutions of the state. It is crucial that we learn from the mistakes of the past in order to protect and safeguard future generations of children from abuse.

We should never be complacent. We have seen with the likes of Savile how organisations can collude to protect themselves from the worst kinds of allegations, and that continues to this day. Only last week we heard about Gosport, where there was massive collusion on real harm, which causes such distress. All citizens require our support as Members of Parliament to make sure that never happens again.

The hon. Lady told the most harrowing stories, perpetrated by organisations that purport to be Christian, and we heard many examples of cover-ups of abusive behaviour towards children, which I sincerely hope will be further highlighted by the child abuse inquiry. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, used the term “dehumanising,” which conveys exactly what we are talking about. That is what was done to those children.

We are four months on from the publication of the report, which asked that we take action within a year, so there are eight months to take action. I would like us to give a formal response much sooner—I intend to do so before the summer recess, as everyone has asked. Perhaps in some respects it will be useful to reflect on the points made in this debate for that formal response. All the questions that hon. Members have asked deserve to be answered as part of that, so I thank them for making those points.

[Lisa Nandy]

I would be grateful if the Minister addressed the two additional requests I made, which former child migrants have also made: for a full apology for the extent of the abuse we now know about; and for the further funding required for the family restoration fund.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

We will indeed consider that. As the hon. Lady will be aware—she alluded to this—we are supportive of the family restoration fund and continue to work with the Child Migrants Trust to ensure that we are supporting that work as effectively as possible. Ultimately, we cannot apologise enough for what we have put these people through. We will pick that up as part of the response.

I talked about how institutions collaborated to cover up harm generally. That is why the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse is so crucial, and why we need to look at historical abuse as well as more recent events; otherwise, we will end up turning a blind eye to the same behaviours. As the whole House knows, this is very much an interest of the Prime Minister. She established the inquiry and she wants to shine a light on all such practices so that we can genuinely protect people from sexual abuse in future. Only by getting to the truth and exposing what went wrong in the past can we genuinely learn those lessons. We have now given a voice to victims and survivors. We have given them a chance to tell their stories, which will enable them to start moving on and to draw a line under the suffering that institutions of the state allowed to happen.

As we have heard, the number of children who were migrated is significant: 130,000 in total and 9,000 since the war. As the hon. Lady says, 2,000 of them are still alive today. The intention was well-meaning, but we know that, despite the good intentions, many children suffered terrible emotional, physical and sexual abuse. As she says, although it happened far from our shores, the fault does not lie entirely with overseas Governments. Having established the policy, we owed a duty of care to those people.

As has been mentioned, some children were sent from this country without their parents’ knowledge or consent and without any necessary approval. The obliteration of individual rights in such circumstances is truly abhorrent, and it shocks me that Great Britain, the mother of the free, could behave in this way to any one of its subjects. It is utterly shocking. We know that some parents were even told that their children had died, when in fact their names had just been changed when they were sent abroad. That is totally unthinkable.

It is right that the child migration programme was captured by that inquiry and very important that we looked at it as a matter of urgency, given the age of some of the survivors. All hon. Members will know that the Department of Health collaborated fully with the inquiry, as it did with all other investigations. We responded to all requests for information and gave full access to our files and records, as well as giving comprehensive evidence to the inquiry hearings.

The hon. Lady will also be aware that the inquiry heard harrowing testimonies from former child migrants. She has referred to some of those stories today. Essentially, everyone turned a blind eye to allow the conditions for that abuse to flourish. It is quite right that the inquiry concluded that systematic hardship and abuse did indeed occur as part of the programmes, and that insufficient protection and safeguards meant that they were allowed to continue for far too long.

The physical and emotional damage in childhood has had a lifelong negative impact on many former child migrants. I know that those watching today will agree that some still struggle to overcome their experiences, which continue to blight their lives and those of their families—not to mention the health consequences. I hear the hon. Lady’s message that since the report was published we have lost a further 10 survivors. That underlines the case for our responding to the report as soon as possible, and I give her my undertaking that I will do my level best to get that out as soon as possible.

One thing that we are grappling with within Government is whether there are issues of precedence in how we address the recommendations of the report. In particular, given the breadth of what the inquiry will be looking at, we have to be careful how we pitch it. That discussion is taking place at the highest level among Ministers. The spirit in which we established the inquiry will be ruined if we do not take those discussions seriously. I convey that message to all hon. Members. In her speech, the hon. Lady referred to a letter from solicitors pending legal action. I have seen that correspondence and it is receiving attention, so I can give her that assurance too.

I appreciate that I am not giving the answer that hon. Members would like, because they are all rightly impatient for the response. I hope that they will accept that we are carefully considering the report’s recommendations and are committed to responding as soon as we can, given the advanced age and declining health of the people we are talking about. Frankly, that is the only way to avoid neglecting them further. We should not shy away from our responsibilities now and there should be no dispute about the Departments that are responsible. The Department of Health and Social Care and its predecessor Departments have led the Government on these issues since they were first identified by Margaret Humphreys in the 1980s. I add my voice to those who have paid tribute to her today. She provided the challenge that made us all face up to what went on in our name in the past.

To conclude, the work of the child sex abuse inquiry brings to our attention the need for change in our approach to child sexual abuse. We should never turn a blind eye. We should always listen. We must also acknowledge that, since the moment when Gordon Brown first apologised for the treatment of child migrants, successive Governments have ensured that we have done our best to support and do right by them. The cross-party formal national apology to child migrants in 2010 was testament to how committed we all are across the House to righting some of the wrongs of the child migration programmes in a way that is meaningful to child migrants themselves. It is what they told us they wanted.

As the hon. Lady said, we have funded the Family Restoration Fund, which has funded around 1,200 trips to reunite families and rebuild family ties. It is important that we continue to support that work and to work with the Child Migrants Trust to deliver it.

Finally, I will say some last words to the former child migrants who, despite enduring such a damaging start to their lives, have managed with great courage to overcome their past and to positively shape their future. We owe it to them to learn the lessons of the past, and the inquiry’s work is designed to do that. I do not think that anyone can pay sufficient tribute to their stoicism and courage in moving on and shaping their lives—but they are quite right to remind us how we failed them.

I wish again to thank the hon. Lady for securing the debate, and I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to it. We will note the points that have been made as we develop our response to the child migration report, which I hope to share with everyone in the not-too-distant future.