Children: Sexual Exploitation

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for securing this debate on a subject that is of growing concern. The prevalence of child sexual exploitation is growing and the age of exploitation is getting younger. With rapid technological advances, the grooming of children has become more sophisticated, as abusers are using the internet and mobile phones to find and groom children. A recent report by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre found a 16 per cent increase in the number of cases in a year, with a quarter of these from online grooming. Children are unwittingly putting themselves at extreme risk through internet usage.

Despite these shocking statistics, in most local authorities child sexual exploitation apparently is not, as we have heard, recognised as a mainstream child protection issue. Certainly more attention and resources must be focused on child protection on the internet. Studies suggest that almost 60 per cent of children aged nine to 19 have viewed online pornography and the rate of unwitting exposure is increasing. It is clear, therefore, that filtering software to control access to pornographic material needs to be improved. The onus seems to be far too heavily left to rest on parents, teachers and carers. Surely internet service and website providers should share a greater responsibility for keeping our children safe and be made much more accountable in this regard.

We need to make it a lot more difficult for our children to come across inappropriate adult content and images of child abuse on the internet. Are the Government engaging with internet service and website providers to ensure that steps are taken in this direction? I am especially concerned with the increasing ease with which internet content can be viewed through television. I believe that the BBC, whose age ratings are known and respected by parents, are already helpfully involved with some guidance to broadcasters, but will the Government’s next communications Act address this problem statutorily? Given that internet videos are not currently subject to the same rules as television, this convergence could threaten to expose even more children to inappropriate content. If legislation is not the Government’s intention, what measures are in place, or at least being explored, to protect children from the result of these technological changes? In short, what are the Government doing to address this?

I hope that, when he replies, the noble Lord will be able to reassure your Lordships that child sexual exploitation is indeed a priority for the Government and that he will tell us something about the actions that they are proposing to take to deal with this situation.