Child Houses for Child Victims of Sexual Abuse

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Baroness Manzoor

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

One of the important issues that came out of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 was a duty to collaborate on this issue. That duty to collaborate is now law and will incentivise and promote joint working needed to ensure that we achieve that multi-agency model of support. My colleagues in the Ministry of Justice are consulting on the guidance on the duty to collaborate and there will be further announcements in due course, but that very co-operative approach is what is needed.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the commitment that the Government are giving to a multidisciplinary approach for these child care centres. The Minister will know, however, that many children are put into child care homes a very long distance away from home. Therefore, they are faced with not having community support, traditional support or other areas of expertise. What are the Government going to do to address this? These children are vulnerable to sexual exploitation because they are so far from home.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. We have tried to respond to the IICSA recommendations. From the Home Office, we also have legislation on that downstream. We are also looking at a violence against women and girls strategy, which is being developed now within the Home Office specifically, with cross-government input. The point she mentioned is extremely important to make sure that victims have support, and I will certainly look at the issues she has raised and take them into account as part of the development of the strategy.

Police: Facial Recognition Technology

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Baroness Manzoor

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, this is an important tool, but the reality is that recently, there have been reports in the press about two women who were stopped by the police for shoplifting, through the use of facial recognition technology. There is an issue here about the algorithms used in facial recognition technology, and inequality and accessibility, particularly in relation to black and ethnic minority people, who are more likely to be misjudged as a result of this technology.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There has been some discussion of the algorithms and their use. There were discussions with South Wales Police in particular, who were dealing with that issue. Those discussions resulted in the National Physical Laboratory testing the algorithm used by South Wales Police, and it found no statistically significant difference in performance on either gender or race. However, it is for those very reasons that the Home Secretary wants to examine the legal framework and, for the reasons that my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti mentioned, to make sure that there is clarity and oversight, and that the plethora of organisations I mentioned at the start of this Question examine this in a way that makes for effective oversight and clarity for police forces.

Syrian Asylum Applications

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Baroness Manzoor

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I assure the noble Lord that people can still apply for asylum from Syria; what they cannot do is have a decision. There is nothing to stop people applying, but they cannot have a decision. That is because we need to review the situation in Syria, partly for the reasons the noble Lord has mentioned and partly because we need to look at the long-term situation in Syria. There may be individuals who currently have applications and who wish to return, and there is a mechanism for them to apply for support from the UK Government to cease their applications and return. There may be other individuals who wish to leave Syria for a range of reasons. This is not a unilateral action by the UK Government; it is one that is supported by Austria, Belgium, France and other European countries, and the pause has the support of the United Nations Refugee Agency. It is a serious assessment of the situation, and I hope the noble Lord will bear with us until we can resolve that.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, if I may, I will build on the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, regarding asylum-seeking children. Of course there is protection, but I really want to better understand the number of children who have gone missing from our institutions and what the Government are putting in place to safeguard them.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I do not wish to, and am not trying to, make a political point, but when we came in on 4 July last year we discovered that there were approximately 90 unaccompanied children still missing. One of the first priorities of the Government is to try to find out what has happened to those 90 children who we were told, on 4 July, had gone missing. We are trying to track down those unaccompanied children. To go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, we are trying to beef up the arrangements to ensure that local authorities and health trusts, and indeed the Government, know about unaccompanied children, be they from Syria, in the context of this Question, or not, so that the safeguarding process can be put in place.