Child Sexual Exploitation

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Jonathan Evans

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of child sexual exploitation.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate and to colleagues from across the House for their support, in particular my co-sponsors, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) and the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey).

First, I want to say that the vast majority of children in this country have safe and happy childhoods. It would be wrong to imply that there is a paedophile lurking behind every tree or that children in general need to grow up in fear. This debate must be approached with proportionality and common sense. However, I am here today because in March this year I received a call from the Thames Valley police to warn me that there were about to be 14 arrests for child sexual exploitation in Oxford. Operation Bullfinch has so far led to nine prosecutions, which will go to the Old Bailey in January. In total, the group concerned will face 51 charges, including the prostitution of girls under the age of 16 and administering drugs for the purposes of rape, trafficking and grooming. There are more than 50 victims, who are aged between 11 and 16, and the exploitation has carried on over an eight-year period. All of this happened minutes from my cosy flat in north Oxford.

Recently, the issue of child sex abuse has shot up the news agenda. In addition to BBC failures over Savile, the Waterhouse allegations were followed by “Newsnight” and ITV journalists and others publicising unsubstantiated and party-politicised allegations that, frankly, would not have looked out of place in the McCarthy era.

[Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend may know that I was a junior Minister in the Welsh Office when the Waterhouse inquiry was set up. Does she agree that many of those who commented on that inquiry would have been well advised to have read the Waterhouse report, as its contents serve to vindicate everything that came to light at the end of last week?

[Nicola Blackwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am by no means an expert on the details of the Waterhouse inquiry. I understand that the report is very lengthy, so I have great respect for anyone who has read it in its entirety. However, I do think those who commented with such certainty would have been wise to have made sure they knew the details before making sweeping statements.

No one takes allegations of child sexual abuse more seriously than I do, but those who attempted to start a vigilante crusade of trial by Twitter were, however pure their motives, certainly not acting in the interests of the victims. At best they clouded the debate and the real issues that affect victims, and at worst they risked undermining prosecutions so that victims might be denied the very justice they deserved. Frankly, I cannot think of any more irresponsible kind of politics or journalism than that. Today’s debate should not be about allegations or rumours; it should be about how we can get better support and justice for victims.

I am daily haunted by the knowledge of what happened to those girls minutes from my home. I cannot refer to any details for fear of prejudicing the case, but that is why I am here now. It is why I called for, and secured, a Home Affairs Committee inquiry into localised grooming, and since May we have been hearing about where the system has failed, such as in Rochdale, and about the reality of the ways in which victims experience child sexual exploitation. Repeatedly I have been told that victims initially do not see themselves as victims and, in a cruel irony, even when they do they struggle to gain credibility from the very agencies meant to protect them.