Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Update

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)]

I would like to update the House on the Government’s progress in implementing commitments made in response to the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, following on from the publication of the Government’s response to the inquiry’s final report in May last year.

The final report concluded seven years of investigations. It exposed widespread child sexual abuse and significant institutional failings spanning several decades. It captured harrowing accounts from victims and survivors—over 7,000 of them—who bravely came forward to share their testimonies with the inquiry.

When the Government published their response to the inquiry’s final report last May, the then Home Secretary was clear that our response did not represent our final word on the inquiry’s findings, but rather the start of a new chapter. We remain focused on delivering on our commitments and being transparent about the progress we have made, but also where there is more to do. We owe that to all victims and survivors.

Mandatory reporting (Recommendation 13)

The Government are taking concerted action on several of the inquiry’s recommendations, including a central recommendation to introduce a new mandatory reporting duty for those engaging with children across England to report known or witnessed incidents of child sexual abuse. As the inquiry’s findings made clear, there is no excuse for those who actively try to cover up child sexual abuse or try to evade proper scrutiny and justice.

We have engaged extensively with those likely to be impacted by this duty through our call for evidence in May and consultation in November to inform how best it can be implemented. We have identified the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill, announced by His Majesty the King in November, as a legislative vehicle for introducing the duty.

Redress scheme (Recommendation 19)

The inquiry’s findings laid bare how vulnerable children, over many decades, were systematically raped, sexually abused and exploited in children’s homes and other institutions responsible for their care, health and wellbeing.

In May, the Government committed to establishing a redress scheme for victims and survivors of non-recent child sexual abuse. This will require significant join-up and collaboration across Government to work through the many complexities involved in delivering a scheme that is sensitive to victim and survivor needs and provides a non-adversarial, trauma-informed route to seeking redress. My Department has been engaging extensively with experts in this area—victim and survivor representative organisations, academics, lawyers, insurers and redress schemes operated by other national and local Governments —to scope the potential options and costs of establishing a redress scheme in England and Wales. I will work with my ministerial colleagues to deliver the scheme and to ensure the voices of victims and survivors are at the heart of this process.

Criminal injuries compensation scheme (Recommendation 18)

A redress scheme needs to form one part of a much wider package of improvements to existing routes in England and Wales for victims and survivors to pursue compensation for the abuse they have suffered. The Ministry of Justice has conducted a public consultation on whether to amend the scope and time limits for submitting an application to the criminal injuries compensation scheme (CICS), which closed in September last year. The Government are carefully considering our response to this and to our previous consultations in 2020 on CICS as a whole and in 2022 on the CICS unspent convictions eligibility rule. We will publish a single response to all three consultations as soon as practicable.

Therapeutic support (Recommendation 16)

The Government recognise the significant role therapeutic support can play in helping victims and survivors to recover from the devastating—and often lifelong—impacts of their abuse. But we also recognise the challenges many victims and survivors face when trying to access this support.

The Home Office is continuing to provide £4.5 million to voluntary organisations providing nationally accessible services to support victims and survivors of child sexual abuse through the support for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse (SVSCSA) fund. In August last year, the Ministry of Justice also recommissioned the rape and sexual abuse support fund, which is providing £26 million over 20 months—from August 2023 to March 2025— to more than 60 specialist victim support services. These services offer tailored support programmes, including counselling, therapeutic services, advocacy, outreach and group activities to victims and survivors of all ages, including children, to help them cope with their experiences, and move forward with their lives.

The Ministry of Justice is providing funding to the independent centre of expertise on child sexual abuse to deliver resources to improve the provision of services to sexually abused children, young people and adult survivors of non-recent child sexual abuse in England and Wales. This includes a directory of support services and a data hub, ensuring data on child sexual abuse and support is readily available and accessible to all. These tools will help commissioners to make effective commissioning decisions by improving their understanding of victim and survivor needs and the services available to them. Victims and survivors will also be able to access up-to-date information about accessing the right help.

The Ministry of Justice is also investing in the Bluestar Project at the Green House, a specialist sexual violence support service, to improve the quality of the support available to children pretrial. The Bluestar Project will provide training to 60 community-based support providers, to build knowledge and confidence to remove barriers to children and survivors accessing pre-trial support services.

The crucial support that victims of domestic and sexual abuse need to move forward with their lives is currently commissioned across a range of public sector bodies. Through the Government’s Victims and Prisoners Bill, we will facilitate a more strategic and co-ordinated approach, by placing a statutory duty on these bodies to collaborate on victim support services for victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and serious violent crime in England. The duty to collaborate creates a framework to drive forward better strategic multi-agency collaboration on commissioning, to help local areas map their local needs and target resources more effectively. This will reduce duplication and improve strategic co-ordination of services so that victims get the timely and quality support that they need.

Child protection authority (Recommendation 2)

The Government accepted the need for a stronger safeguarding system by ensuring existing mechanisms work as effectively and cohesively as possible to properly safeguard, support and protect children from child sexual abuse and other harms. Many of the reforms set out in our ambitious children’s social care programme, “Stable Homes, Built on Love”, will contribute towards fulfilling the desired effect of the inquiry’s recommendation to create a new child protection authority in England and Wales. These reforms include actions which will improve practice in child protection, including updating “Working Together to Safeguard Children” guidance and publishing national multi-agency child protection standards. I am pleased that both have recently been published.

In addition, the national child safeguarding practice review panel is launching a project to investigate how safeguarding partners are delivering local child safeguarding practice reviews (LCSPRs) and how their quality can be improved. This project is aimed at improving the delivery of LCSPRs and providing safeguarding partners with the support they need to ensure their review processes make a real difference to children’s lives and improve practice on the ground. Alongside this, the panel has launched a new national review into child sexual abuse within the family environment. This review will consider how safeguarding partners can improve practice to better prevent, identify and respond to this kind of abuse and to better protect children from harm.

As part of wider reforms, the Department for Education is driving forward a package of work to enhance safeguarding in out-of-school settings, which can include tuition centres and private tutors, extra-curricular clubs and activities, sports clubs, uniformed youth organisations and religious settings offering education or tuition in their own faith. In September last year, the Government published an updated safeguarding code of practice for providers of these settings, as well as guidance to support parents in making informed choices about the settings their children attend and how they can raise any concerns.

The Department for Education will also be launching a free-to-access e-learning package for providers to complement the code of practice and is in the process of reviewing existing guidance for local authorities on safeguarding in out-of-school settings, to ensure they are fully utilising their legal powers and those of multi-agency partners to identify and intervene in out-of-school settings of concern. A call for evidence to examine how safeguarding can be further strengthened in out-of-school settings will also be published in the coming weeks.

Data (Recommendation 1)

We continue to drive improvements in data quality and collection, including through funding dedicated child sexual abuse analysts in every policing region. This week the vulnerability knowledge and practice programme, which is funded by the Home Office, has published the national analysis of police-recorded child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) crimes report. The report provides an in-depth analysis of crime during 2022, highlighting the scale and threat of child sexual abuse.

We are working with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to understand whether a new survey could more effectively measure the current scale and nature of child abuse and neglect, including child sexual abuse. ONS is currently developing the questionnaire and safeguarding procedures for the proposed survey, which will then be piloted.

The Home Office established the child sexual exploitation police taskforce in April last year, which is supporting forces to improve identification of crimes and data recording. The taskforce is collaborating with the tackling organised exploitation programme, which we continue to fund to provide dedicated intelligence and analytical expertise for forces undertaking complex organised exploitation investigations.

In summer last year, the Department for Education published the “Improving Multi-Agency Information Sharing” report, setting out the barriers to information sharing and the proposed next steps to overcome these. They are now working with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to scope and shape a pilot scheme to test the use of the NHS number as a consistent identifier for children. The Department for Education also published the “Children’s Social Care Data and Digital Strategy”, setting out a long-term plan for improving the use of data, information and technology to support services, develop insights and improve outcomes for children, young people and families. And the “Information Sharing Advice for Safeguarding Practitioners” is also being updated following a public consultation and a revised version will be published in due course.

Through our continued investment in the independent centre of expertise on child sexual abuse, an update to the centre’s annual trends in official data report will be published early this year. This will bring together 2022-23 data from children’s social care, policing, criminal justice and health to build a picture of how agencies identify and respond to child sexual abuse and will provide important insights into changing trends in practice.

Children’s Minister (Recommendation 3)

We champion the best interests of children at the most senior levels of Government, with the Secretary of State for Education fulfilling the role of a Cabinet Minister for children. The Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), works across Government to raise the profile of issues affecting children to ensure they are front and centre of relevant policy and decision making. Her efforts are bolstered by the child protection ministerial group (CPMG), established in October 2022, which brings together Ministers from the Department for Education, Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Ministry of Justice and Home Office to drive a co-ordinated Government response on child protection and safety.

The CPMG most recently met in September and discussed the Government’s proposals for the new mandatory reporting regime and updates on establishing a redress scheme in England and Wales. It will meet again later this month to continue to drive forward the Government’s commitments to the inquiry’s findings.

Public awareness campaign (Recommendation 4)

The Government are raising the profile of child sexual abuse through our work to deliver on the inquiry’s recommendations. We are continuing to encourage a wider national conversation, building on the inquiry’s work, by raising awareness of the scale and nature of child sexual abuse and—crucially—how to respond to it, including through our call for evidence and consultation on mandatory reporting.

We have dedicated resources to more targeted campaigns and programmes which have raised awareness of child sexual abuse more widely. In September, the Home Office highlighted to parents and guardians the risks of social media companies implementing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) without robust child safety measures in place on their platforms. The next phase of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s “Stop It Now!” campaign, funded by the Home Office, launched in November with a focus on online grooming. The Home Office continues to fund the prevention programme, which launched the latest phase of its #LookClose campaign focused on improving public and business sector awareness of child sexual abuse and exploitation in public spaces, and how they can report concerns and support victims and survivors. And the Home Office is providing funding to supplement the work of the NSPCC helpline, including a national campaign encouraging members of the public and professionals to report concerns around child sexual abuse.

Pain compliance (Recommendation 5)

The Government did not accept the inquiry’s specific recommendation to prohibit the use of any technique that deliberately induces pain in custodial settings, but we share the inquiry’s aim of ensuring children are properly safeguarded across all settings, including custodial. It is also necessary to ensure staff working in these settings are properly trained and equipped to protect children from harm, including self-harm or causing physical harm to other children.

In the Government’s response to the inquiry, we set out our progress in piloting revisions to the “Minimising and Managing Physical Restraint” syllabus, which staff are trained to use in under-18 youth offender institutions and secure training centres, so that it only includes training on behaviour management and restraint. Staff are trained to use pain-inducing techniques separately as an “exceptional safety measure”, and only to prevent risk of serious harm.

The training pilot—which took place at Wetherby young offender institution—has now concluded, with early indications indicating that pain-inducing techniques have been used to restrain children less often. The youth custody service will proceed with rolling this out to other sites in the near future, starting with Oakhill secure training centre, where this process has recently commenced. We will of course continue to keep the policy and use of restraint, including pain inducing techniques, under constant review.

In our response, we also committed to publishing a new framework to provide a consistent approach to the use of force and restraint for staff in all settings across the youth custody service. This framework was published in August last year.

Amendment to the Children’s Act (Recommendation 6)

The Government accepted unequivocally the need for children and young people to have their voices heard, to feel empowered to raise concerns and challenge any aspect of their care.

That is why we are prioritising work to update national standards and statutory guidance for the provision of children’s advocacy services. In September, we launched a consultation on our proposals, including extending the scope of the standards to apply to special residential settings and introducing a new standard on non-instructed advocacy for children who are non-verbal. This consultation closed in December. We also remain committed to reviewing and strengthening the independent reviewing officer and regulation 44 visitors’ roles and continuing to engage with stakeholders on different options.

Staff registration (Recommendations 7 and 8)

The inquiry exposed critical gaps in workforce regulation, including inconsistent registration regimes, and rightly called for these to be plugged to improve the quality of care and protection of vulnerable children.

The Department for Education is continuing to explore introducing professional registration of the children’s homes workforce to better protect children in residential settings. Alongside this, we are working to develop a programme to support improvements in the quality of leadership and management in the children’s homes sector and will announce further details in due course.

The Ministry of Justice is assessing how a new internal register could operate for the workforce in youth offender institutions and secure training centres. The Ministry of Justice is also currently reviewing and strengthening recruitment and vetting practices in the youth secure estate and enhancing the standards to which all staff working in these sites must adhere.

Disclosure and barring scheme (Recommendations 9, 10 and 11)

The disclosure and barring regime, operated by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), plays a crucial role in the safeguarding of children, and the Government are determined to ensure the regime remains effective at this. The Government are carefully considering the recommendations from the inquiry, alongside those from the independent Bailey review of the disclosure and barring regime.

We are investigating how we can ensure that all those who work closely with children can obtain the highest-level DBS checks, including whether that person is barred from working with them. We are reviewing current criminal record disclosure arrangements for those working with children overseas, to consider the scope of further strengthening the regime. We have engaged extensively with stakeholders around safeguarding relating to those in self-employed or overseas roles, where working closely with children. We are committed to ensuring, through working with DBS and regulatory bodies, that those who have a statutory duty to inform the DBS about individuals who work closely with children and may pose a risk of harm to them, fulfil that duty. Through its outreach activity and work with regulatory bodies, the DBS is ensuring that all those subject to the duty are fully aware of their responsibilities and are protecting the children and young people within their care.

Compliance with victims code (Recommendation 14)

The criminal justice joint inspectorates have included an inspection on the experiences of victims of child sexual abuse of the criminal justice system in their 2023-25 inspection programme, with victims code compliance proposed to feature.

The Government’s Victims and Prisoners Bill will also introduce a power for the Home Secretary, Justice Secretary and Attorney General to require that the inspectorates carry out a joint inspection assessing victims’ experiences and treatment and also introduce a new duty on the inspectorates to consult the Victims’ Commissioner in developing their inspection programmes. This will support a clearer and sharper focus on how victims and survivors are treated across the system, allowing issues to be identified and solved.

Civil statute of limitation laws—personal injury claims (Recommendation 15)

The Government recognise, as reinforced by the inquiry, that it might take years—and in many cases decades—for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward and feel ready to disclose their trauma. We will publish a consultation paper shortly, setting out options for reforming limitation law in child sexual abuse cases, as well as examining how the existing judicial guidance in child sexual abuse cases could be strengthened.

Access to records (Recommendation 17)

Recognising the difficulties experienced by many victims and survivors in accessing records about their non-recent abuse, the Government committed to engaging with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on introducing, as recommended by the inquiry, a code of practice on retention of and access to records known to relate to child sexual abuse. Options are now being worked through to see what is feasible.

Online Safety Act (Recommendations 12 and 20)

The Government’s world-leading Online Safety Act 2023, containing measures that respond to many of the inquiry’s proposals, received Royal Assent in October. This groundbreaking legislation introduces the strongest duties for technology companies to prevent, identify and remove harmful child sexual abuse and exploitation content from their services and platforms. It will also provide better protections for children from harmful and age-inappropriate content by requiring technology companies, if their services are likely to be accessed by children, to have robust safety measures in place and to enforce age limits and age verification measures. Ofcom has now formally taken on its role as the regulator for online safety and is consulting on the codes of practice which will guide companies on how to fulfil the safety duties in the Act. The Act will also bring into force a new role for the National Crime Agency, which is preparing to receive reports of child abuse direct from industry, strengthening the UK policing response to online child sexual abuse.

While the regulator gets up to speed, we continue to call on industry to step up their efforts in combating child sexual abuse on their platforms now. The Government have been steadfast in our resolve to challenge global social media companies, like Meta, to not willingly blind themselves to the horrific exploitation and sexual abuse occurring on their platforms and instead introduce robust safety measures to protect children, as they roll out notionally privacy enhancing technologies like end-to-end encryption. The Government have also invested in initiatives like the safety tech challenge fund to illustrate how technology solutions can be developed which balance privacy with child safety, and we are also working closely with our international partners, including through the Five Country Ministerial, to tackle the sickening rise of child sexual abuse images generated by artificial intelligence and stop their spread online.

Concluding remarks

I would like to reassure the House that where we can act quickly, we are doing so. Where more time is required, we are dedicating resources to disentangle complex issues and ensure we deliver what victims and survivors need.

The voices of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse —whether they shared their stories with the inquiry or not—ring through each of the inquiry’s recommendations and will continue to inform the Government’s efforts to implement them. They strengthen our resolve to eradicating this heinous crime from our society, once and for all.

[HCWS176]