Children: Criminal Exploitation

Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord and I have discussed this at length, and I do not disagree that someone who is caught up in county lines activity or similar types of activity is both a victim and perhaps a perpetrator through the coercion of a third party. He will know that the knife crime prevention orders—I know he disagreed with them—were introduced in an attempt not to criminalise children but to divert them out of the activity in which they had become involved or into which they had been coerced.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, following up on that last question, the grooming patterns of children and young people, whether for sexual exploitation or criminal exploitation, are almost exactly the same. It took us ages to achieve a proper definition of exploitation of children in the sex industry. We should not make the same mistake again. It seems that what we need to do, and I ask the Government to consider this, is create a legally binding definition of child criminal exploitation that makes it absolutely clear that the vast majority of these children, some as young as 10 years old, are victims.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The right reverend Prelate makes an important point. The Serious Violence Strategy, which we published in April 2018, contains a government definition of child criminal exploitation, which is commonly used to describe child exploitation associated with county lines drug dealing. There is robust legislation alongside that to prosecute those who exploit children for criminal purposes.