Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I pay tribute to the victims and the whistleblowers from the police and other authorities for their bravery and absolute consistency in continuing to fight for their cause.
I am sorry that the Conservative spokesman has taken the line that he did. I am afraid that from these Benches we have a different standpoint. It was really disappointing on Monday to hear the leader of the Opposition attack the current Government when this applies to Governments of all parties over recent decades, including my own, but especially the Conservative Government who commissioned Professor Jay’s IICSA report, published a response but then did nothing. Surely it is better for all of us to come to this in humility and admit that, time after time, politicians failed to listen. This is not just about parliamentarians; it is about elected mayors, councillors, assemblies and combined authorities too. We did not just fail to listen but we all failed to act.
The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, said that now is the time to right wrongs, and that is correct. The victims and the whistleblowers, even when reported in the news and documentaries, have had to listen time and again to promises of action but nothing changing. It is refreshing that the Statement says that the Government will act on all the noble Baroness’s recommendations. But we know that this promise has been made before in response to complex, long-standing and shameful incidents over the years, and I am sure that some still continue. As Professor Jay said in her IICSA report, we lie to ourselves if we think that child sexual abuse and exploitation are not happening now.
We are seeing similar issues with the slowness of the infected blood compensation scheme, the Post Office Horizon compensation scheme and the Windrush scheme. Will your Lordships’ House hear that the inquiry will be set up swiftly and will be fully funded, including support for victims, as has been promised for the other schemes I have just mentioned, but which has not always appeared? Will the inquiry also draw evidence from the previous reports and reviews, so that the evidence it takes will build on what is already known? As I mentioned at Oral Questions, there are two reasons for this. First, it is much less traumatic for the victims and whistleblowers, many of whom have had to give the same evidence many times, each time revictimising them. Secondly, that should ensure a shorter evidence period of the inquiry; as the Statement says, there is an urgent need for action and accountability, whether for the perpetrators or the organisations that did not protect these children when they were raped and groomed, including councils, the police, the judiciary, social workers and more.
Will victims, including whistleblowers, be supported properly, right from the start, and not be revictimised? How long will it take to review the convictions that some of these young people, mainly girls, received, because they were perceived as complicit and able to give consent when they were plainly children? What steps will the Government take, in the light of the noble Baroness’s audit review, to ask councils, the police, the judiciary, social workers and others to review their working practices now? While the inquiry’s future report and recommendations are important, it is evident that there is enough for those organisations to reflect and change their practice now, in light of this audit review.
The Government have promised a form of mandatory reporting, as well as a Bill on the duty of candour, or Hillsborough law. Can the Minister say when we will see them in Parliament? Both are urgent to prevent this happening again in the future.
The recommendations on appropriate data collection and data sharing are also vital and, I am afraid, long overdue. The use of the Smith algorithm in West Yorkshire sounds helpful in identifying people possibly in scope as victims and survivors. Will it be rolled out elsewhere, given West Yorkshire’s positive experience?
The noble Baroness’s report proposes research into taxi drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation, including online. Unlike the monks, teachers and children’s workers involved in other group child sexual exploitation, taxi drivers are below the regulatory radar, other than the licence for their taxis. So will the Government ensure that statutory standards for taxi drivers will be brought in, to end “out of area” taxis plying their trade in places many miles away, where they are not on the radar of the local authority in which they are trying to work?
Will the Government publish a plan for communication to the wider public? This is a highly sensitive topic for young people, families and communities. In particular, will the Government work with faith groups and community groups? The noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, rightly pointed out during Oral Questions that most Muslims are absolutely horrified by the behaviour of small groups of truly evil men, but it will be important for these communities to understand what they need to do to prevent it from ever happening again.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful to both Front-Bench speakers for their contributions and questions. I will try, as ever, to address those issues.
Let me go straight to the heart of the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, to the Government regarding accepting the inquiry recommendations. When we came to office last year, we looked at the IICSA recommendations, which had been ignored for two years by the previous Government. We have accepted and have begun to implement the vast majority of the IICSA recommendations. Some are still being examined, but the broad direction of travel is to accept. In January this year, we also commissioned the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to whom I pay full tribute, to produce a report on emerging trends and how the four or five major potential inquiries in towns that we are familiar with were progressing, and whether we needed some national co-ordination on those issues. She entered that with an open mind and has come back and made 12 recommendations, including the Government producing national frameworking standards as part of an inquiry to support the local inquiries that were commissioned and taking place.
I regard that not as a U-turn but as a positive contribution from an independent colleague of ours, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. The 12 recommendations have come forward in a way that we can make further progress to tackle this horrendous issue which, as the noble Lord mentioned extremely well, impacts on victims across the country—there have been 500,000 victims of child abuse and 100,000 victims of sexual exploitation. It is beholden on this House to look at those recommendations seriously, and we have accepted the need for that national inquiry.
Both the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned how the inquiry will be established. I said earlier at Oral Questions that we will be bringing that forward at an early opportunity; we have to appoint a chair and set terms of reference. We brought the report straight to this House and the House of Commons this week; we will do that in relatively short order and I will report back to this House when that is complete.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, also mentioned victims. We want to ensure that victims are central to this and that their testimony and experience are brought to the inquiry. We will be giving a mandate to the chair, whoever he or she may be, to bring forward that support for victims in due course—a point mentioned also by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.
Since the election, more than 800 grooming gang cases originally dropped by the police have been reopened, and the child sexual exploitation police task force has increased arrests by more than 50% in the past year. So there is action on the ground as well as progress on the recommendations.
It may help Liberal Democrat Members and His Majesty’s Opposition if I run quickly through the 12 recommendations. One is the inquiry, which we have accepted. On mandatory charges of rape, we will begin an immediate consultation with the CPS and the police to develop legislative change on that recommendation. On the national police operation, we will actively increase policing and statutory partners to design an operation that will take criminals to task in a much more strategic and energetic way. The national inquiry is a recommendation we have accepted. The noble Baroness mentioned reviewing the criminal convictions of victims; we will be legislating in the police and crime Bill, which has just completed its passage in the House of Commons, to put in place a scheme to disregard those convictions. When legislation has been passed, that will occur. The mandatory collection of ethnicity data is an extremely important point that was raised in Oral Questions. We will undertake that and will commission it to begin immediately for police forces, and we will be issuing guidance.
Mandatory information sharing between statutory agencies is a provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently before Parliament. We are making it unequivocally clear that information must be shared. The recommendation from the noble Baroness on unique reference numbers for children is also in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill before the House currently. The recommendation from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, on research into drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation will begin immediately in the Home Office. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned taxi licensing, and the Department for Transport is committed to working as quickly as possible to consider the options the noble Baroness brought forward. So the Government will be taking forward all 12 recommendations, and I hope that will be welcomed across the House.
I should also just say, because I am slightly confused— I hope the House will bear with me—that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, has been pressing this Government to implement the IICSA recommendations and has been asking questions about the IICSA recommendations on child sexual grooming and on a range of other matters, all of which, I have informed this House, even as recently as Questions today, will be in the Crime and Policing Bill before these Houses of Parliament.
The noble Lord does not have the opportunity to address this now, but maybe he can think about this, because not one hour ago His Majesty’s Official Opposition in the House of Commons voted against that Bill at Third Reading and, in doing so, voted against the measures to implement the IICSA report. His Opposition Members of Parliament walked through a Lobby voting against those measures not one hour ago, and not just those measures but measures on retail crime, on prevention of terrorism and on a whole range of things in the Crime and Policing Bill, which will come to this House of Lords very shortly for Second Reading. He has an opportunity, at Second Reading in a few weeks’ time, to think through his position on this and reflect on whether his party, his leader, his official shadow Home Secretary can continue to support that opposition to the Crime and Policing Bill measures, because those measures are the very things that he stood up, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to support this Government in doing. I will just let him reflect on that. And it was not just his party—the Reform Party voted against the Third Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill.
I am not sure what this is coming to, but these measures are important, and I mention them today because the grooming gang recommendations which we have accepted here today will be implemented in the Crime and Policing Bill. If the noble Lord continues his position of voting against that Bill at Third Reading, they risk not becoming law. Also, he has not supported the measures that I thought he was supporting, on child sexual exploitation, that we put in the Crime and Policing Bill to meet the IICSA requirements on things such as mandatory reporting. I just put that before the House because it is hot off the press and I think it is worthy of reflection.
However, I give the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, a commitment that the 12 recommendations before the Government from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, will be implemented. We will, as we have done, implement the vast majority of the IICSA recommendations and will be looking at the ones that are still outstanding to see how we can implement them. We will continue to press down, through prosecution and through police activity, on grooming gangs to ensure that we tackle those. I commend the Statement to the House, and I am happy to answer further questions on it in detail.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
We will hear from the Labour Party, followed by the Cross-Benchers.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that we are all incredibly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for this work, as in her previous independent inquiries on behalf of Governments of all stripes. There is, no doubt, a problem when walking on eggshells prevents the investigation and prosecution of particular criminals because of fears of racism. That is clear from this report, but does my noble friend the Minister agree that we have seen these group scandals in relation to child abuse in the Catholic Church and the Church of England—if the right reverend Prelate will forgive me, patriarchal communities where vulnerable people are not believed? With that in mind, and also referring to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is the age of criminal responsibility, at just 10 years old in England and Wales, too young when children and girls who are exploited in this way, drugged and put into prostitution, are then treated as criminals and not as victims?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for echoing the praise and support for the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and the work she has done. She has set down a further set of developments that we can look at and action to help reduce victims and reduce this level of crime. My noble friend tempts me into addressing the age of criminal responsibility. What I will say is that that issue is one that we will reflect on in government. I cannot give her chapter and verse on that today, but what I can say—I said it a moment ago in relation to recommendation 3, which is on reviewing convictions of victims—is that we will legislate in the Crime and Policing Bill to introduce a disregard scheme for the convictions of individuals who were found guilty of prostitution offences as children. The criminal law has rightly evolved to make it clear that children cannot be prostitutes, and it is long overdue that individuals convicted of child prostitution offences have their convictions disregarded and their criminal records expunged. We will do that in the Crime and Policing Bill, and I look forward to His Majesty’s Official Opposition supporting us on that Bill, not voting against it as they just have done in the House of Commons.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister say whether the review involving children will also consider young boys? As patron of a drug treatment centre and chair of a homeless housing association, I am convinced that there are young boys who are led into prostitution in a similar way.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The potential amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill will look at individuals where criminal convictions have occurred, be they male or female, at an age when they were deemed to be children. We will be tabling amendments to that Bill to ensure that those convictions are expunged, those records are removed, and that the individuals will not be subject to that in future. I look forward to her support on that.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, it is really good to hear what the Minister has said, but victims will need a lot of help to readjust into normal life. We cannot just do an inquiry and leave them to fend for themselves. Will the Minister please find support for all those who have come forward, and for all the hundreds that we are, I am afraid, going to find? Will he assure us that a national inquiry means a national inquiry, that it will not be just five or six local authorities that are going to feed in, and that all authorities, all police agencies and all social services will feed in on what they are doing, in whichever part of the country they are, to be able to respond to questions about victims?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s support. I was just checking what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said on the Statement in the House of Commons:
“On support for victims, my right honourable friend the Health Secretary—
that is, the Health Secretary for England—
“will fund additional training for mental health staff in schools on identifying and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma, exploitation and abuse”.
On broader victim support, the Home Secretary drew attention to additional funding for mental health support in schools and has also ensured that the independent commission will gather and assess victim support as part of its remit once the chair is established and the terms of reference are determined.
The point that the noble Baroness made about the UK nature of this inquiry is extremely important. I have responsibility for England and Wales, and the Department of Health has responsibility for England, but, obviously, some matters are devolved: policing in Scotland and in Northern Ireland; and health in Wales, Scotland and in Northern Ireland. I want to ensure—and we have given a mandate to the potential chair in due course—that it deals with all the devolved Administrations, consults them and looks at lessons which can be applied, with the consent of the devolved Administrations, on a UK-wide basis.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I fully support the comments of my noble friend Lady Brinton, particularly around the lack of action previously seen around the Alexis Jay report, but I will press the Minister on one of the points that my noble friend highlighted, around bringing in a Hillsborough-style law that would put a duty of candour on local authorities. The Minister did not respond to that, and I think it is really important, because if we are to bring in that law, if we are to have this inquiry and it is to have results, then we need that duty of candour.
In response to what I heard from the noble Baroness, I will also talk about charities in places such as my home city of Sheffield. The organisation I worked for for 30 years, Sheffield Futures, was the lead organisation for CSE in that city, and I just make one plea. There are lots of accusations about certain communities. If we are to get justice, any police officer will tell you that they have to work within those communities. Alienating communities will not deliver justice, because I tell you now, from 30 years’ experience in youth service in South Yorkshire, there will be victims of South Asian origin as well, but because of the issue around honour—and colleagues in here will know what that means—some of those victims have remained silent. It is upon us all to make sure that those victims also have a voice.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this issue. I extend my apologies to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton; I am trying to cover a range of issues in a very short time.
On the question of the duty of candour and the Hillsborough law, the noble Lord and the noble Baroness will know that the UK Government had a manifesto commitment to introduce that legislation. As yet, it has not been introduced, but I know that work is being done behind the scenes to do that. As a supporter of the Liverpool Football Club, and somebody who, when a Member of Parliament, had constituents who were victims of the Hillsborough incident, I know that that will be very welcome legislation. It is still being worked on in government terms, and will be published in due course.
The noble Lord mentioned the support of voluntary organisations. That is extremely important. I would hope that the prospective chair, whoever he or she will be, will reach out and look at the role of the voluntary sector as well.
The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that victims know no ethnicity. There are perpetrators from every walk of life and every religious and ethnic group, including white British, and there are victims from every group. We have a particular focus on organised gangs, and that has been prevalent in certain places. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, has made recommendations about ethnic data collection, which we will look at and which will help inform in future what is happening for both victim and perpetrator, but the noble Lord is absolutely right to raise this issue today.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
My Lords, it is so important that both sides do not play politics. The reality is that none of our parties has covered themselves with glory, including my own—I absolutely put my hands up to that. It was not that long ago when a Conservative prospective Prime Minister said that money being spent on historic child abuse inquiries was money “spaffed up the wall”. I think we all need to remember that. These crimes are not historic and I would like the Minister to update us on what is being done to protect victims today. We know that these crimes are still happening and that these rape gangs are still operating in our towns and cities across the country.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend. I want to have consensus in this House on the measures that we take forward as a whole, which is why I reflect on the fact that measures in the Crime and Policing Bill were voted against in the House of Commons within the past hour and a half.
My noble friend is absolutely right to focus on the issue of what is being done now. We have focused on putting additional support into policing and tracing convictions. We have investigated a lot of cases—some 800 cases that were closed cases previously—and increased the conviction rate by 50%. That is an important measure. With the acceptance of the 12 measures from the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and the inclusion of the IICSA recommendations in legislation, along with action and the further examination of a couple of those, this Government are taking the issue very seriously.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I declare my interest as co-chair of the national police ethics committee. Despite the fact that the very first recommendation of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, was that we must see children as children, it has really taken until tonight in this House for much of the conversation to move into that area. This was a point made by Sir Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, at an event I attended earlier today. He has talked about how much of the failure to prosecute was down to police forces treating abused children not as victims but as somehow culpable in their own abuse. I thank the Minister for already confirming that we will have a victim-centred approach to this inquiry. Can he assure us that the inquiry will explore Sir Stephen’s point, including through the data it collects, so that we can determine to what extent it was a poor response by police forces to the victims of these serious multiple rapes that lies behind the failure to prosecute and convict? Does he agree with me that this is far better than just lazily assuming, as the media seem to be doing, that every single failure comes down to questions of the ethnicity of perpetrators? Finally, on a happier note, will he join me in congratulating Sir Stephen on his recently announced knighthood, a worthy acknowledgement for a man who has turned round how my city and its surrounds are policed?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I join the right reverend Prelate in congratulating Sir Stephen on his knighthood as chief constable of Greater Manchester. It is a great honour for an individual to receive that and a recognition of the important work he has done in turning round Greater Manchester Police, with the support of the mayor.
The right reverend Prelate mentioned the issue of convictions, which I hope I have covered. Where individuals have had convictions, we will legislate to have those overturned.
It is important that we look at the whole issue of how we got here. The focus is on gangs of a particular ethnicity, and that has been a driving force for the work that is being done in local, and now the national, inquiry. But I think we need to look at the police response as a whole to child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation, and at how we ensure that young children who are victims find a place where they can have trust in the system to bring forward their experiences, and be believed in bringing forward those experiences, and for the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts to provide a mechanism for them to secure the conviction of those evil predators who have abused them in their childhood.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, one of the greatest failings in this horrific case of exploitation was that many, particularly police officers, were afraid to come forward. They felt that they would be accused of being racist and that would be the end of their careers. What support is the Minister going to give in the context of this inquiry to new police officers, new council officials and new people in authority who may feel the need to come forward as part of this inquiry? What cover will be given so that they can come forward without fear of losing their career? It should be borne in mind that it was a Labour Prime Minister who said that people who wanted these inquiries were somehow far right. That set an environment of fear. How are we going to wind that back and give people the space to do their jobs properly?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
If I may paraphrase the Prime Minister, I think he was referring to the fact that people on the far right were using this to exploit fears and prejudices and to stir up fear and hatred.
What I am trying to do—I am sure the noble Lord will share this aim—is find concrete solutions by accepting the recommendations here and accepting into legislation, as far as we can, the recommendations of the IICSA report, and by taking positive action to encourage the police to go after particular groups that we know now can have their cases reopened, and so improve the prosecution rate accordingly. It is absolutely right that the core duty of police officers should be to follow the evidence and the truth and not worry about the ethnic background of the individual who may or may not be the perpetrator—they should bring the perpetrator to justice, whatever background they are from. I will ensure that guidance is given by our chief constables to ensure that the police understand that duty, as I believe they now do.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I urge more humility and a little less complacent gaslighting. No parties have clean hands. Too many people, including the victims, were smeared as racists for even raising the issue—and that includes in this House, as an aside. Will the 2020 Home Office paper on group-based child sexual exploitation be immediately withdrawn now that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, has exposed its much-cited false claim that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly white, which the audit says does not seem evidenced by research or data—in other words, it is misinformation? It is a Whitehall policy wonk version of the literal Tippexing out of the word “Pakistani”. Can the Minister assure us that that report will now be taken out of public circulation?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. I will say two things to her. The 2020 report, as I recall, was not produced this Government or this Home Office. I will look at that report and the action, but the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, herself said only yesterday at the Home Affairs Committee, “If you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it is disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, it is white men”. We need to accept the discussions and focus we have had to date and look at positive solutions for dealing with this.
When the noble Baroness says we need less complacency and more humility, I say that I have stood at this Dispatch Box on behalf of this Government and accepted all 12 recommendations from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. I have accepted the bulk of recommendations from the IICSA report from Alexis Jay, and I have put in place additional police support to take action on historic cases and bring 50% more offenders to justice. I do not think that is complacent. I ask the noble Baroness to try to work with us constructively; let us look at the solutions. I will accept constructive criticism, but I am not going to be called complacent when we have accepted every recommendation, done the things we have done on IICSA and brought more people to justice.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lord, the first person who raised the issue of the rape gangs—in other words, the first whistleblower—happened to be my mum, Ann Cryer MP, who started raising this in 2003. She was then smeared and attacked—particularly by Labour figures, I have to say—for being a racist. I am not talking about Ministers in the then Government, many of whom supported her, and my noble friend Lord Blunkett, then Home Secretary, went out of his way to make sure that prosecutions happened—which they did. I am talking about councillors, councils and other institutions that went on the attack, and lied and smeared about the rape gangs. It is possible that some of them genuinely thought that they could not bring themselves to believe it, but I do not believe that about all of them. I think some of them were complicit. Some of them knew it was going on and they decided to cover up. If there is evidence to that fact in those cases, they should be brought before the courts and prosecuted.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I pay tribute to Ann Cryer, the mother of the noble Lord, Lord Cryer. I served in Parliament with Ann and I know she raised these matters and faced extreme difficulties locally as a result, and took a very brave stand at the time. Again, I say to colleagues across the House, let us look at how we deal with this issue. My party has not been in Government for 14 years, but we have been in control of some of the councils. My party was not in control of government when a lot of these issues happened, but I still have a responsibility to make sure we deal with these in an effective way. I want to make sure that we accept these recommendations and see them through, and this House will monitor me to make sure we do it.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in responding the right reverend Prelate, the Minister said victims need to find a place they can trust. Among the promises of action in the Statement is a promise of further action to support child victims. For many of these children and young people to be able to speak out, they will need the support of known and trusted adults: people like youth workers, teachers or medical professionals. Are the Government going to ensure that there are enough resources in affected communities so that those kinds of trusted adults are available to support victims?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I hope I can answer the noble Baroness in a positive way. I have said already that we will look at how we support victims to interact with the inquiry and the potential chair. I want to make sure that the chair, whoever he or she is, has an opportunity to look at how they frame the issue, rather than have central government directions on it. The Prime Minister has been clear that the inquiry will be fully funded, and we are looking forward to how we can develop that. The involvement of victims is central and we need support for them, because I do not want to retraumatise people who are talking about their cases and what happened to them in the past. It is important that we get to the truth of what has happened, where there have been institutional failings and how we put in place policy options to rectify that, reduce future victims and ensure that we bring perpetrators to effective justice.