Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)
Debate between Lord Robathan and Baroness May of Maidenhead(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs May
The hon. Lady has raised a number of issues of concern generally in relation to these matters. I absolutely agree with the first point she made, which I have alluded to in my statement and in my replies: what underlay this was a feeling that somehow it did not matter and that because of where these girls came from—in some cases it was boys, but in the overwhelming number of cases it was girls—nobody needed to do anything about it. That is absolutely appalling, and we must reject that culture and do everything we can to make sure it no longer exists.
Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)
Let me take my right hon. Friend back to the issue of the 2003 report presented to the Home Office, as she has direct responsibility for the Department. The shadow Home Secretary talked about people turning a blind eye, suppressing and ignoring the report. The allegations made yesterday and today on the BBC were very distressing, so could the Home Secretary please publish what she finds out about all that, without an overarching inquiry and without a freedom of information report? She needs to publish details of what happened in the Home Office in 2003 and who was responsible, and hold to account the officials, or indeed Ministers, who were responsible at the time.
Mrs May
I am certainly prepared to make sure that the results of the work that we do in the Home Office, which is then looked at by Richard Whittam and Peter Wanless, to ascertain what happened in the Home Office is made available to Members of this House. As I indicated, this was a Home Office-funded piece of work. The report that came to the Home Office did not include, at the second stage, Rotherham. That appears to be because of the actions taken within Rotherham in relation to the researcher. We are doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this and find out exactly what was known and by whom, and what actions were taken.