Child Sexual Exploitation: Grooming Gangs

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My noble friend is entirely right: we need to look not only at the consequences of these abhorrent crimes but at the causes if we are to prevent further victims emerging. In that context, the Home Office is taking forward work on a number of fronts to improve our understanding of group-based child sexual exploitation and how it manifests in different ways throughout the country. Therefore, steps are being taken at both national and local agency level to see what can be done not only to protect vulnerable children in this context but to deter and indeed disrupt persons becoming engaged in such devastating crimes.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the comments that have already been made in the House this morning, and I commend the work of the police and crime commissioner, the chief constable and the MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion. However, perhaps I may raise a small issue that follows through on the point raised earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. Will the Minister talk to his colleagues about taxi drivers registering in one local authority area but operating in another? That causes real difficulties in clamping down.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The noble Lord makes a valid observation. There has been an association between these abhorrent crimes and certain areas such as minicab driving. Officials and Ministers are considering the registration of minicab drivers in one area in order that they can then operate in another.