Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 6 January.

“Child sexual abuse and exploitation are the most vile and horrific of crimes, involving rape, violence, coercive control, intimidation, manipulation and deep long-term harm. The information from the crime survey should be chilling to all of us. It estimates that half a million children every year experience some form of child sexual abuse: violence and sexual violation in the home; repeated rapes or exploitation by grooming or paedophile gangs; threats and intimidation involving intimate images online; or abuse within institutions that should have protected and cared for young people—cruel and sadistic crimes against those who are most vulnerable.

All of us have a responsibility to protect our children. Perpetrators must be punished and pursued, and victims and survivors must be protected and supported. But these crimes have not been taken seriously for too long, and far too many children have been failed. That is why this Government are determined to act, strengthening the law, taking forward recommendations from independent inquiries, and supporting stronger police action and protection for victims.

There is no excuse for anyone not to take these crimes seriously. Brave survivors speaking out have shone a light on terrible crimes and the failure of institutions to act, be it in care homes in Rochdale, Asian grooming gangs in Rotherham or Telford, the abuse covered up within faith institutions, including the Church of England and the Catholic Church, or within family homes.

That report, alongside the coming to light of other appalling crimes, is why our party when in opposition called for a national independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and supported that work when it was launched by the previous Government. Over seven years, that inquiry, expertly led by Professor Alexis Jay, engaged with more than 7,000 victims and survivors, processed 2 million pages of evidence, and published 61 reports and publications. The findings should be truly disturbing for everyone—they described the pain and suffering caused to victims and survivors, and the deviousness and cruelty and perpetrators. Nor is there any excuse for anyone not to recognise and act on the deep harm and damage of organised gang exploitation, abuse, sexual assaults and rape.

Ten years ago, two reports by Alexis Jay and Louise Casey in Rotherham found that 1,400 children had been sexually exploited, raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked across other towns, abducted, beaten and threatened with guns. Children had even been doused in petrol. Girls as young as 11 had been raped. Those reports a decade ago identified a failure to confront Pakistani heritage gangs and a ‘widespread perception’ that they should ‘“downplay” the ethnic dimensions’ for fear of being seen to be racist.

When those reports came out, those failings in Rotherham were condemned across the board by both Government and Opposition in this House. As I said at the time:

‘It is never an excuse to use race and ethnicity or community relations as an excuse not to investigate and punish sex offenders’.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/9/14; col. 169.]

The then Home Secretary made it clear that

‘cultural concerns … the fear of being seen as racist … must never stand in the way of child protection’.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/9/14; col. 168.]

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse also ran a specific investigation strand into child sexual exploitation by organised networks, which ran for two years and produced a separate report in February 2022. It concluded that police forces and local councils were still failing to tackle this serious crime and set out further recommendations for change. But despite those different inquiries drawing up multiple recommendations, far too little has actually been done. None of the 20 recommendations from the independent inquiry into child abuse has been implemented. As the Act on IICSA campaign group from the Survivors Trust said this week, victims of child sexual abuse

‘cannot afford further delays in meaningful action … It is imperative to keep the focus on radical reform’.

Two different Conservative Home Secretaries said after the report was published that it was a watershed and should be the beginning of a new chapter for change, but that has not happened. We now need new impetus and action.

Since coming into office, the Safeguarding Minister has met with Professor Alexis Jay and survivors, and has convened the first dedicated cross-government group to drive forward change. To ensure that victims’ voices remain at the very heart of this process, we will set up a new victims and survivors panel to work on an ongoing basis with the interministerial group, to guide them on the design, delivery and implementation of new proposals and plans not just on IICSA but on wider work around child sexual exploitation and abuse. We will set out more details and timescales based on that work.

Before that, I can announce action on three key recommendations. First, I can confirm that we will make it mandatory to report abuse, and we will put measures in the crime and policing Bill—to be put before Parliament this spring—to make it an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions, to fail to report or to cover up child sexual abuse. The protection of institutions must never be put before the protection of children. I first called for this measure in response to the reports and failings in Rotherham 10 years ago. The Prime Minister first called for it 12 years ago, based on his experience as Director of Public Prosecutions. The case was clear then, but we have lost a decade and we need to get on with it now.

Secondly, we will legislate to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, because the punishment must fit the terrible crime.

Thirdly, we will overhaul the information and evidence that are gathered on child sexual abuse and exploitation and embed them in a clear new performance framework for policing, so that these crimes are taken far more seriously. One of the first recommendations of the independent inquiry was a single core dataset on child abuse and protection, but that has never been done. We will introduce a single child identifier in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and a much stronger police performance framework, including new standards on public protection, child abuse and exploitation.

We are accelerating the work of the child sexual exploitation police task force, set up—rightly—under the previous Government. There was a 25% increase in arrests between July and September last year. That sits alongside the tackling organised exploitation programme, which uses advanced data and analytics to uncover complex networks. Data on ethnicity is now being published, but we will work further with them to improve the accuracy and robustness of the data and analysis.

We will continue to support further investigations that are needed, including police investigations and local independent inquiries and reviews, which can expose failings and wrongdoing in local areas and institutions, as we have seen in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester. We support the ongoing work commissioned by Mayor Andy Burnham into historic abuse in Oldham, which has led to new police investigations, arrests and convictions. To build on those findings, the leader of Oldham Council has confirmed this week that work to set up a further local independent inquiry is already under way, including liaison with Oldham survivors. We welcome and support this work, which will put victims’ voices at its heart.

The Telford inquiry was particularly effective because victims were involved in shaping it at every stage. Tom Crowther, who led that inquiry, has now agreed to work with the Government and other local councils where stronger engagement with victims and survivors is needed, or where more formal inquiries are required to tackle persistent problems. We should also be clear that wherever there have been failings or perpetrators of terrible crimes have not been brought to justice, the most important inquiries and investigations should be police investigations to track those perpetrators down, to bring them before the courts and to get victims the protection that they deserve.

Finally, we have to face the serious challenge that the fastest growing area of grooming and child abuse is online. We will also take much stronger action to crack down on rapidly evolving forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse and grooming online, including tackling the exponential rise in artificial intelligence-facilitated child sexual abuse material. We will set out a significant package of measures to strengthen the law in this area in the coming weeks.

For many years there has been broad cross-party consensus not only on the importance of this work but that the interests of victims and survivors must come first. There will be different views about the details of the policies that are needed, but every one of us across this House has supported action to protect our children. It is the responsibility of us all to keep them safe for the future. I hope that Members across the House will work with Ministers and the victims and survivors panel that we are setting up to change protection for the better and to make sure that it is perpetrators who pay the price. I commend this Statement to the House”.

17:00

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for answering on the Statement. We on these Benches, like many in this country, are shocked and appalled by the grooming gang scandal—there is no other word for it. The abuse and exploitation of children by these predatory gangs represent some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and the trauma inflicted on victims and survivors, many of whom were children at the time, is immeasurable. Let it be absolutely clear that we stand with the victims and survivors of these abhorrent crimes, and we call for the strongest possible action to bring perpetrators to justice and ensure that such atrocities are prevented in the future.

However, I must express our profound disappointment on these Benches that His Majesty’s Government have not commissioned a national statutory public inquiry into this matter. Only through a thorough, independent examination of the facts can we hold all responsible parties to account, learn the lessons required and ensure that justice is delivered. So I repeat the point I made to the Minister during Questions: will he agree that a national statutory public inquiry is crucial, not only to deliver justice for the victims but to rebuild public confidence in the ability of our institutions to protect vulnerable children? Further, will he clarify why the Government have chosen not to pursue this route despite the scale and severity of these crimes—and, above all, to provide justice for the victims?

The Minister outlined measures that the Government intend to take. Although these are welcome steps, they must go further. Can the Minister provide more specific details on how these measures will, first, ensure that the systemic failures within institutions such as police forces, social services and local authorities are identified and rectified; secondly, prevent the abuse and exploitation of children in the future; and, thirdly, offer meaningful and sustained support to victims and survivors, many of whom continue to suffer lifelong trauma?

The survivors of these horrific crimes deserve to be heard, believed and supported at every stage. This includes access to specialised mental health services, legal support and protection from further harm or intimidation. What additional resources will the Government provide to ensure that all survivors, regardless of where they live, can access the help they so desperately need?

Finally, we urge the Government to recognise the importance of transparency and accountability in addressing this issue. A piecemeal approach risks further undermining public trust. A further statutory public inquiry would not only bring clarity and justice but signal a resolute commitment to ensuring that no child in this country is ever subjected to such horrors again.

Let us be clear that these crimes are a disgrace to British society, and every effort must be made to ensure that they are never repeated. We owe it to the victims and survivors to act decisively, comprehensively and with the utmost compassion and resolve. I look forward very much to the Minister’s response to these specific points.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I thank the Minister for the Statement. From these Benches I also thank the Government for the progress that is finally being made on the acceptance of the recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. The victims—not just victims of criminal exploitation and grooming in gangs but all the victims covered in IICSA—were ignored at every level for far too many years, except by a small number of people, including women and including Jess Phillips, now a Minister, whose work has been absolutely outstanding in this area. Even so, it has taken us many years to get to this point where we can actually formally move forward. We can move forward, but many of the victims’ lives are still affected—not just then but now—and many are feeling victimised again because of the debate currently going on in the wider world.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, asked again for a new inquiry—I recognise that he and his colleagues are doing that. I sat in this Chamber on 24 October 2022 when the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, was the Minister responding to the publication of the report. The words the Government said at that point led one to believe that things would move ahead with speed and that most, if not all, of the recommendations would be accepted and implemented at speed. That has not been the case. It may be only two years on, but it has been very slow. The only recommendation that I think has been implemented is on the toolkit, which is a helpful practical tool—but none the less it is not enough.

From these Benches I wonder whether, given the tone of the debate at the moment, it would be helpful for the Government to publish a list of all the inquiries that have happened, not just IICSA but also in relation to children being groomed in towns and cities around the country, as well as the inquiries that the inspectorate of policing has held—at least two—along with links to them so that we, the public, can check them, in addition to the recommendations and action plans. Some of those were published some years ago—Telford in particular—and it might be helpful if the Government could have a brief look at the reviews of those action plans, ask people involved in them to mark progress, and re-energise those issues that require more work. Are the Government planning such a move? It might be salutary, not just for the Government but for everyone.

During Questions earlier today I spoke about one of the issues I was utterly confused about: the IICSA recommendation on providing mandatory aggravating factor sentencing when a child was exploited—that is, controlled, coerced, manipulated or pushed into sexual activity by two or more people. That is exactly the territory of the gangs that we have been hearing about in the past few days. I am concerned that the written response from the previous Government was very clear that it absolutely did not need to happen—they absolutely refused to do it. Yet now they are saying that it must be done. In fact, Robert Jenrick MP has gone further and said there should be a mandatory life sentence, which is a bit of a jump from an aggravating factor in sentencing. I hope the Government move speedily ahead with the aggravating factor in sentencing, because that will send a very clear message about the unacceptability of this sort of crime by the communities. The focus that many of us have also had is not on the perpetrators but on the failure of the public services, which is why I am particularly keen to see whether there is any further information from the inspectorate of policing on the recommendations it has made to see whether they have been picked up in further inspections.

Many noble Lords will know that I have a particular interest, as does my noble friend Lady Walmsley, in mandatory reporting. Recommendation 13 in IICSA on mandatory reporting was not the standard mandatory reporting style that has been accepted by scores of countries, including some states in America, Canada and Australia, where it has worked extremely well.

The most important thing about this model of mandatory reporting that has been adopted abroad is that it entirely changes the culture in every organisation working with children to think safeguarding because it is safe to report it, and it is only ever used as a criminal response where there has been deliberate negligence by somebody not to report. Interestingly, it has also changed the methods of training on safeguarding for people who need it. I hope that the Government will consider the Private Member’s Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, which has its Second Reading a week on Friday, because it reflects the international model of mandatory reporting. I highly commend that to the Government.

In summary, I hope that the Government will be able to give us a timetable on which of the recommendations might take slightly longer to implement than others. The Minister may be able to give us an indication today. He made a reference in the Question earlier today about concerns expressed by another noble Lord on the lack of recompense. Can he outline the current thoughts on the timescale for that recompense to be available to victims?

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the two contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I start by simply echoing what the noble Lord and, by implication, the noble Baroness, said: child sexual abuse and exploitation are the most vile and horrific crimes and include rape, violence, coercive control, intimidation, manipulation and deep, long-term harm. It is our duty in this House and Parliament as a whole, and as a Government, to make sure that we take steps to eradicate that abuse and ensure that those who commit it face the full force of the law.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked why the Government have not commissioned a national inquiry. I understand where he is coming from and the reasons why he is asking for that. I simply say that I hope he can recognise that, in one way, we have had a national inquiry already. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, who, as Home Secretary, established in 2015 the inquiry that has produced recommendations under Alexis Jay, to whom I also pay tribute. It has set a framework for action in this Parliament and beyond to deal with this issue of child sexual abuse as a whole.

The noble Baroness, Lady May, commissioned the inquiry in 2015; it took seven years and an extraordinary amount of witness presentation and examination of issues, looking also at all the wider inquiries that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned. It produced a series of recommendations, which were delivered to the noble Lord’s Government in 2022. His Government responded to those in early 2023, and he will know that the general election took place in July 2024. When we entered office, progress and delivery on the recommendations were very scant. I say that not as a point of political argy-bargy but in recognition of the fact that we are now trying to lift those recommendations and put them into practice to meet the objectives set by the original commission by the noble Baroness, Lady May.

As my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said earlier this week in the House of Commons, we will, as a starting point, undertake the first three major items. The first is a mandatory reporting mechanism, which means that any individual who has child abuse reported to them, either by a child or indeed a perpetrator, has a statutory duty to report that for investigation by the police and criminal justice agencies. That is an important first step to commit to. The second important step is on legislating to provide an aggravating factor in sentencing. That means that if a leader of a gang and an accomplice is doing this, they know that they will face not just a charge on the criminal offence that they have undertaken but an aggravated offence of the sexual grooming of a child. The third element that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary brought forward is the question of cracking down online, because child sexual abuse has evolved and will evolve, there is a large online presence and we need to look at the mechanisms for that, including artificial intelligence and grooming online. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has said that those three issues—mandating, aggravating factors and online abuse—are serious issues.

Again, we could have a national inquiry. It might well take four or five years and might well cover the same ground as the inquiry commissioned by the noble Baroness, Lady May. What we are interested in is action on the issues that are brought forward, and we will look at the remainder of the recommendations over time to see whether we can bring some energy and action to them, including many of the issues that have been mentioned. That includes the issue of compensation for victims, because victims deserve compensation, but, again, that is a complex, difficult issue to work through.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has helpfully supported the Government’s approach to date and raised a number of key issues which I hope I can address. First, I say to her that I really welcome her support for my colleague Jess Phillips, the Minister responsible for safeguarding of children. She has had a lifelong commitment to tackling child abuse and a lifelong commitment to supporting victims of domestic violence, and she now has the ability, as a Minister, to put some of those lifelong convictions into real government action. She is doing that, and therefore the criticisms that have come her way in the last few days are unfair. She has already been working with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary on the issues that we brought forward on Monday to ensure that we put in the public domain this Government’s commitment to tackling those issues.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made some very helpful suggestions about potentially collecting the elements of the reporting mechanisms and inquiries that have taken place. Telford has taken place; the Mayor of Manchester is undertaking inquiries; there are police inquiries; there is the inquiry I mentioned that has been commissioned. Hers is a helpful suggestion, and I will take it back and discuss it with my colleagues accordingly.

The noble Baroness also mentioned the Second Reading of the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey- Thompson, a week on Friday, to which I will be responding. I will be meeting the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and Jess Phillips next week to discuss the contents of the Bill. I have to say that my initial assessment is that the Bill is similar to what the Government will bring forward and therefore it may well be better to ensure that we have a Government-tested Bill downstream, but the principle of the Bill is one that we accept, and it is an important issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also mentioned the issue of wider government action. One reason that we announced the three particular policy issues is because some of the other 16 or 17 policy issues require a wider government consideration and response, and it is important that we get that right over time. That is one of the reasons we will consider the recommendations in due course.

The noble Baroness asked about timetables. I would love to be able to give them to her, but it is important that we do this right and I do not want to hoist ourselves by our own petard by setting a timescale that does not meet the objective of doing this right and responding in the right way. We have a commitment to secure compensation, and we will commit to review all the recommendations over and above the ones we have made. Again, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will report back to the House of Commons, and I will report back to this House, in due course on those matters.

I hope that those issues are ones on which we can have some co-operation and agreement. We have a disagreement on a national inquiry; that will pass this week. That political discussion and cloud will blow over. What will be left, however, are serious recommendations from a serious report that took seven years in the making and that demands responses with the consideration of time. That is the Government’s main focus: we will bring back proposals in legislation in this Session and will report back on other proposals in due course. I hope I will have the co-operation and support of both Front Bench spokespeople when those moments arrive.

17:18

[Baroness May of Maidenhead (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the references he has made, on this occasion and on others, to the action that I took in relation to setting up the inquiry on child sexual abuse.

Child sexual exploitation takes place online and physically in the real world. Children are also groomed online, with a view to them then being abused physically —exploited, abused and raped. What representations are the Government making to the owners of social media platforms to encourage them—or request or require them—to take action to ensure that their platforms cannot be used for child sexual exploitation online, or for the grooming online of children, by either gangs or individuals, with a view to physical abuse and exploitation taking place?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I reiterate my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, for establishing the inquiry in the first place. She was right to do so, and in due course I want to do justice to the recommendations that have come out of that inquiry.

She raised an extremely important point about companies, because online grooming material, the deepfake stuff now coming out and a whole range other material are extremely worrying and perturbing. Social media companies must have responsibility for that as well as society. The Government will introduce a requirement for companies to report online child sexual exploitation and abuse identified on their services to the National Crime Agency. This requirement will be underpinned by regulations which will ensure that companies provide high-quality reports with the information that law enforcement needs both to identify offenders and to help support and safeguard victims. In-scope companies—and we will have to determine which those are—will have to demonstrate that they already report under existing mandatory or voluntary overseas reporting regimes, which will ensure that they are exempt from this recommendation and avoid duplication of companies’ efforts.

I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness completely that online companies have a real responsibility. They cannot just host material; they must have responsibility for some of that content. The steps that I have outlined, which are underpinned by the first three elements of the response to the report, are ones which the Government will take forward with some urgency.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and I want to make it clear to the whole House that I am speaking in a personal capacity today.

I want to ask the Minister about the proposal in IICSA for a single core dataset, which the Government say in the Statement that they are planning to implement. Would this be an accessible dataset, open and transparent? Or would journalists, or others seeking information on that dataset, need to go through the inevitable delays that freedom of information requests and appeals entail? This is particularly important because, as he will know, the other recommendation of IICSA is that a national public awareness campaign be mounted. National public awareness will work only if we call out people, particularly those who are now, we are told, for the first time going to be described by ethnicity in that database.

As, I think, the only person in the House who grew up within those communities, having grown up in Pakistan, I want to refer to deportations to that country. Can the Minister tell the House what steps the Government are planning to take to seek deportation of those who are convicted and who then seek to thwart that through renouncing their nationality—I refer particularly to Pakistan in this regard? Will he call in the Pakistani ambassador and open talks with the Pakistani Government to ensure that those who have dual nationality are not permitted to renounce it once they are under police investigation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those questions. There is a significant amount of detail in the points that she has raised, and I hope she will understand and bear with me when I say that the Government are working through the broad objectives that we have set. The first three objectives I have mentioned are on mandatory reporting, the grooming aggravated offence and online work. These are the three major priorities.

I note what the noble Baroness said about the database. If she will allow me, I want to reflect in detail on that point. It is an important way in which information is put into the public domain and I do not want to commit today to things that we find are impractical or counterproductive downstream. I will note that point and follow up on it.

The noble Baroness made a point about convicted individuals from a particular nation. From the Government’s point of view, people who commit child abuse—whatever their race, ethnicity, background, sexual orientation or other things—should be held to account by the forces of the law and prosecuted accordingly when evidence is brought forward. In the event that she mentioned, of someone who has been convicted who has a nationality which is not British and has served a sentence in a jail in this country, the Government always reserve the right to deport that individual back to their home country in due course. The noble Baroness raised dual nationality issues. If she will allow me, rather than commit today on the detail of that extremely technical and complicated issue, I will take it back and discuss it, but it is an important procedure going forward.

I say to the noble Baroness and to all in this House that I want to focus not just on the nationality of any particular or potential groomers or offenders but on people who undertake grooming and offending and to make sure that we tackle that across the board. Individuals of whatever nationality should be held to account for their criminal actions.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I recognise that I get very angry about this issue, and I hope the House will forgive me. I have worked for most of my life with this sort of activity. I started in Newcastle in 1970 in the then new children’s department as a family social worker. I have worked with victims of sexual abuse and of other forms of abuse in different ways, now through the voluntary sector. I really resent this issue now being used as a political football.

I am absolutely shocked at the Official Opposition and at people I have always regarded as good colleagues on the Front Bench opposite for the way they have been doing this. The reality is that all of us over the last 50 years have not done enough at each stage to make sure that we protect, particularly, young girls and women. The idea that the previous party that was in power for all that time is better than everybody else on it is shocking. We all have to accept that we have not done enough. In this House last year, I spoke about sexual exploitation at the Second Reading of a Bill and was seen as weird for doing it.

I really hope that the Government are going to take hold of action now. Those young women—I have been talking today to some of the organisations that are working with them—are still angry that not enough has been done to support them. We have to support them, and I hope the Government will do that.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend and for her persistent campaigning on this issue. It is important that we focus on the issue: how do we better protect children and survivors, how do we give them victim support and how do we prevent future criminal actions by individuals, whatever their race or ethnicity? We must also seek to prosecute individuals, whatever their race or ethnicity.

While I can make points about the review commissioned by the noble Baroness, Lady May, the seven years afterwards, the response and what has happened since then, I want to try to look forward. That means taking forward the three recommendations that we have agreed to and looking at the work we have done since July on the child sexual exploitation police task force. That was established by the last Government. We have now put some energy into the acceleration of its activity and saw a 25% increase in arrests around child sexual exploitation between July and September of last year.

There is much to do. I appreciate that history is worth looking at, and there are lessons for us all—including me, as I was a Home Office Minister a long time ago, in 2009-10. My hope is that we can use this to find common ground to tackle the issue. In doing so, let us make sure that we protect children and bring perpetrators to justice.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, when I last tried to introduce a mandatory reporting duty for child abuse, in an amendment on Report to the Serious Crime Bill, on 28 October 2014—a long time ago—the Minister at the time, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, responded by announcing the inquiry, which later became the IICSA inquiry established by the noble Baroness, Lady May, as well as a public consultation. However, he said:

“Research is inconclusive in determining whether mandatory reporting regimes help, hinder or … make no difference to child safeguarding outcomes”.—[Official Report, 28/10/14; col. 1083.]


He also said that the duty to report might “divert” services from the task of safeguarding children. Is the current Minister convinced that the research is clear that a mandatory reporting duty will help the task of protecting children, rather than hinder it? The clarity of the evidence will be very important when we come to debate the Home Secretary’s proposals, which we want to make sure go through.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government believe that a mandatory reporting mechanism will help the system, which is why we will introduce it.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I fully agree with the decision not to hold a full statutory inquiry. Does the Minister accept that we have already had sufficient relevant inquiries? Does he accept that they are very expensive, go on for a long time and very often stand in the way of appropriate action? What is actually now required is the urgent implementation of the existing recommendations, on which there is widespread agreement.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Viscount must have read my notes, because I agree with him fully.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain why the Government are presenting this as an either/or issue? I do not get it. Yes, we should implement Professor Jay’s proposals—great action—but the reason why victims are demanding a specific inquiry looking at the Pakistani heritage grooming gangs is—

[A noble Lord]

Question.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

What do the Government think about the fact that state agencies knew about the industrial rape of girls who were considered to be white trash? Social workers, teachers and police officers looked the other way. That is what we need an inquiry into. It is a specific problem; we cannot just say that there was “child sex abuse”. As for those who say that this is a political football, when I raised in this House the Telford report, people tut-tutted and shouted, “Shameful”—and they meant me, not the rapists. This has been made a political football by others. There is a specific issue here—can the Government address it and respond to the Jay inquiry?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government are cognisant of the fact that there have been failures by individuals who should have had a responsibility for safeguarding children. We will look at that and put in place the lessons learned. But I do not think—speaking personally, as well as on behalf of the Government—that a four or five-year inquiry will add to the sum of knowledge that we have, for the very reasons that the noble Viscount outlined. What we need to do is to implement action to ensure that we prevent further child abuse. That is what this Government’s main focus will be.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I chaired the Catholic Council for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. My role there was to ensure that the Catholic Church co-operated fully with the inquiry. The CCIICSA still exists, because the recommendations have not been implemented. In that role, I sat through much of the inquiry, and I heard an enormous amount of evidence from victims. Many of those victims were visibly retraumatised by the very experience of giving evidence to IICSA; their pain was very often palpable. It also seemed to me, as I watched, that they were traumatised by listening to others who were giving their evidence as witnesses—but they had to be heard; there is no question about that. The Minister has said that there was a module in IICSA that effectively dealt with organised crime. The people who participated in those hearings, and all the other hearings of IICSA, do not need a further inquiry; they need action. We spent £186 million on IICSA, and it was money well spent. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to finding ways to implement the recommendations now to protect all our children for the future.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, for that support, and for her support for the Government not reinvigorating or starting again a national inquiry. She makes an extremely important point about victims. Victims are victims and, whatever has happened, they are being traumatised and have been traumatised, and will carry that with them for many years, if not for life. Therefore, the Government recognise that we need to support victims and survivors. We will look at the issue of compensation in slower time now, but we are doing that. We also recognise the significant impact that funding for support services can play in helping victims. The Home Office, my department, is continuing to provide funding to voluntary organisations for survivors of child sexual abuse. We will continue to work across government to ensure that we put a proper victims package in place to help support them.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I compliment the Minister, unusually, on his balanced approach, which is commendable. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong—again, I do not do so that often—that this should not be a political football. But it has to be said that the Prime Minister, yesterday or the day before, made it a political football by saying that anybody who criticised him was being right-wing. I do not know if the Minister has read the article in the Times today on an interview with Andrew Norfolk, who investigated this scandal and exposed it some dozen years ago. In it he defends the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, when he was DPP, and we should note that absolutely. The article also reports Andrew Norfolk as saying that,

“the national inquiry shied away from investigating the causation of grooming gangs, ‘probably for not dissimilar reasons why left-wing academics still attack me … It is very difficult to talk about this stuff without being accused of being Islamophobic’”.

He then adds that,

“everybody is still too scared”.

I do not think we should have a seven-year inquiry but the Government need to focus very much on the idea that the grooming gangs were not generally white English people, as everybody knows. The Government need to look at that closely.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has said what he said. I have heard it and do not agree with much of it. The Prime Minister has a strong record, as DPP and as a political leader, of tackling this issue, and a strong record of supporting my honourable friend Jess Phillips, who has a strong record of tackling this issue. Why this is being politicised is that some people are using it to attack the Government for a range of reasons. I want to focus on the issue at hand, and that is how we prevent child sexual abuse. The measures in the recommendations of the report to date will be looked at. We have already said what we are going to try to implement, and that is the important thing to focus on.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one of the issues that arises in this long and sad saga is the difficulty of arriving at truth and the associated possibility of false accusation. Indeed, the IICSA inquiry was set up in the first place on, in one sense, a false premise—a whole load of utterly untrue accusations against prominent people. That was why it began. Operation Midland showed the accusations against Ted Heath, Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan to be absolutely untrue. There are many such occasions on which false accusations are made.

The reason this is relevant is that, first of all, it is a terrible thing to accuse people falsely, and, secondly, it can produce an extraordinary waste of time, effort and money, instead of finding out what really is true. In this respect, I very much endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said about mandatory reporting. We need to work out what it would actually do and what effect it would have. It is proposed by Professor Jay in the IICSA recommendations, where she says that, on the disclosure of child abuse, reporting is mandatory. But what is the disclosure of child abuse? Is it simply somebody saying that somebody has behaved badly? Is it a direct accusation? Does it exonerate the person receiving that from investigating themselves and thinking hard about it? Do they exercise judgment? Are they just complying rather than exercising their conscience? These are serious questions that need to be asked about this subject.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am conscious of the time, but I will try to give the noble Lord a response to that. On mandatory reporting, we are focusing on two specific issues. First, if a person, whoever that person is—a teacher, social worker, police officer or whoever—has a disclosure from a victim to them, they have a mandatory duty to feed that in to the law enforcement agencies for investigation. That creates a dynamic, first and foremost, that if a child goes to an adult who is in a responsible position and says, “I have been abused”, the adult does not make the judgment of “Yes, you have” or “No, you haven’t”, the adult says, “I have to report that now to an appropriate authority”. Secondly, and this is a more difficult side of this case, if somebody who has committed abuse goes to their MP and says that—I had a case once where that happened to me as a Member of Parliament—or they go to a priest or another individual and confess to a crime, they also have the statutory duty to report the issue to the authority at hand.

I think that is an important issue. It is about disclosure, it is about action. I withdraw what I said about the priest: I may have overstepped the mark there, and I wish to keep the House embedded in truth and fact. The essential point is that if an individual—a child or an abuser—reports that, the person they report it to has the ability to disclose that information to the police, who will then investigate and action it accordingly. I think that will help a dynamic of reporting and surfacing of information. I note the noble Lord’s points on historical abuse. We have had much discussion in this House, and I am willing to have further discussion accordingly when it is raised.