Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Baroness Falkner of Margravine

Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has experience far beyond any that I could bring to this House, so I am grateful for his contribution today. He raises an extremely important point. We have established a fund—it is of only £5 million, but it is available to all local authorities to draw on to establish the work that needs to be done. That was in the initial announcement from my right honourable friend in the House of Commons last week and will be kept under review for the future. We have given the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, a remit to look at the existing areas of concern within local authorities. No doubt she will come back with an audit and further recommendations for the Government to consider.

I recognise that the noble Lord has concerns about long-term funding for key services that are about interventions. I can say to him only that we are going to keep all that under review. I know I will have his support, and that of others with great experience, in implementing the IICSA recommendations and when we bring back proposals on the other recommendations, in what might be only 10 weeks’ time.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, although I am speaking in a personal capacity today. About a week ago, when the Minister and I engaged on a similar but different Statement, I asked him two questions and he said he would need to go away and think about them. One was about data. I do not know whether he has seen the reports, based on freedom of information requests, about backsliding. I very much welcome the emphasis on ethnicity data collection and demographics, as the Statement says. Has he seen the statistics? I will give him only three examples. In Hampshire, in the past five years, 58% of offenders sentenced for all sexual offences involving children were recorded as having an unknown ethnicity. In West Mercia, it was 55%, and in Leicestershire, it was 52%. If the police are already not recording identity for fear of being accused of either racism or Islamophobia, what are the Government going to do, before we get the full gamut of actions under the Jay report, to ensure that the current requirements are met?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness had a conversation with me, both in this Chamber and outside. She will know that there are occasions when Ministers can absorb views but cannot necessarily give definitive answers, because policy is developed outside of just the discussions in this House and in government as a whole. I hope she will welcome that one of the policy initiatives in the second Statement made by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary was the collection of data—the very point she raised with me before we made that announcement. I could not give her assurances then because we had not made the announcement; now we have. That data will be collected by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. If it shows matters that need to be addressed, they will be addressed, to try to reduce this curse.

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Baroness Falkner of Margravine

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.