Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation: Telford

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the progress on the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Almost a year ago, local campaigners in Telford finally succeeded in persuading the local council to hold a Rotherham-style inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town. The survivor-led campaign began in 2016. The issue was raised in questions and debates in Parliament, but the local authority rejected all requests. Together with all local safeguarding partners, it told the Home Secretary and the Home Office, who sent officials to Telford to see what was going on, that no inquiry was necessary. Ten men in positions of power in safeguarding signed a letter to say that there was nothing to see here.

The campaign for an inquiry was eventually successful, because courageous victims were willing to speak out and come forward. I salute their bravery. They spoke to a determined female journalist, Geraldine McKelvie, who carried out a tireless 18-month investigation. In February 2018, she finally put the shocking scale of the problem in Telford into the public domain.

The purpose of the inquiry was to hold those in authority to account, to give answers to survivors and their families, and to give our community reassurance that lessons have been learned and that everything possible is being done to ensure that our young people are not at risk. Victims and families wanted to understand what had happened and to know that their experiences would not be brushed aside and forgotten. The inquiry was supposed to restore trust in the system, to reassure people that it would be on the side of the victim, to acknowledge the fears and anxieties of our community, and to restore confidence that the authorities would protect vulnerable young people. It is hard to understand how that could not be a matter of urgency.

Child sexual exploitation is not just any crime. It has a lifelong impact on victims and their families and it affects the whole community. It is about control, manipulation and fear, and it creates long-term psychological trauma for victims and families, from which survivors struggle to recover. It is also about the failure of those in authority to act and to recognise what was happening. Let us be clear: the victims in Telford were predominantly young vulnerable women, and those in power, who had responsibility but who so often looked the other way, were predominantly men.

When the media attention moved to other towns with similar problems, I did not want victims to feel let down because, after all their courage in speaking out, nothing had really changed. I have worked with survivors, more recent victims and their families, and I want my community to know that I have an absolute sense of duty to ensure that the inquiry happens and that it delivers accountability and change.

Once the council had agreed that such an inquiry would be held, everyone expected a chair to be appointed to lead it. One senior councillor said that the appointment was to take place before the end of summer 2018. The council would then step back and let the chairman get on with it, because of course the council’s actions would be subject to scrutiny by the inquiry, hence the need for independence.

I kept a close eye on that to make sure that matters were progressing, but when I looked, I found a shocking lack of urgency. A PR executive has been appointed to position the council more favourably, along with a top firm of solicitors who are experts in dispute resolution. As to the inquiry, however, there is not even a job specification for the chair yet, no advert has been placed and no terms of reference have been drafted.

The experts in dispute resolution say that they are “designing a recruitment process” and

“looking to share their thoughts on this at future meetings with the council.”

They also say that they are,

“mindful to build in sufficient time for each of the steps involved in the recruitment process, and may add in additional steps at a later stage.”

Once the recruitment process has been completed, they will begin “designing terms of reference”.

We are one year on from when the council finally agreed that it would commission an inquiry—one year—and that battle had been fought since 2016. What progress has there been? A partner in that top firm of solicitors can now share a logo for the inquiry and is concerning themselves with typeface and colour. In that year, they have also come up with an inquiry name. I mean no disrespect to the solicitors involved, but we have to ask who is taking responsibility for this extraordinary situation.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She has been almost uniquely at the sharp end of holding those responsible for overseeing the appalling state of affairs in Telford to account. She was quite right to call this debate to highlight the complete lack of action that she has just illustrated from those who were due to appoint the chair and get the inquiry under way. I sincerely hope that when the Minister responds, he will reassure her that he will take as keen an interest as she does in ensuring that people are held to account for the failures of local authority supervision as soon as possible.

[Lucy Allan]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind words, and for his support on this issue and many others that I deal with as the Member of Parliament for Telford.

The inquiry was meant to be for the survivors and our community. It was meant to provide assurances to our young people, and to heal and restore. It was also about accountability for those in authority. Instead, we see a slow-motion gravy train for solicitors—expensive people fussing over logos and letterheads—which sends the message that getting to the bottom of what happened in Telford is not a matter of urgency.

That is set against a history of the men in authority not taking the issue seriously. The chief inspector claimed that the female journalist sensationalised the number of victims. The chair of the safeguarding board stated that the number of victims was made up on the back of a fag packet. A male cabinet member for children’s services attacked the journalist on social media and described her and her sources as “despicable”. Others said that those who raised the issue were doing it for political gain or were responsible for Britain First and the English Defence League protesting in the town.

Those men resisted and struggled and came up with multiple reasons why no inquiry could be held. They used their positions of power to shut it down. “It will cost millions and millions,” they threatened. Well, they seem to be working hard to make that happen. Rather than getting to the bottom of the history of child sexual exploitation in the town, they are creating a tangled bureaucracy that benefits no one. People want fresh air, daylight and transparency on the issue; they do not want the inquiry to be tied up in knots for five years and to cost millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

When it has been gently suggested—by far more subtle means than a debate in this place—that the delays must stop, the authority’s reaction has been furious. “This is what survivors want,” it claims, which shows how completely out of touch it is. The survivors do not want multimillion-pound bureaucracy with logos and letterheads that stretches out potentially for five years. They want access to counselling; they want help to rebuild their lives; they want their experience to be acknowledged; they want answers; and they want to know that lessons have been learned, processes are in place and attitudes have changed. Why would any responsible council claim that a long, expensive, bureaucratic inquiry must be better than an efficient inquiry that delivers results?

The council could have copied the style of the Rotherham inquiry. That was what survivors asked for. The inquiry took three months to set up, it took nine months to deliver and it cost £120,000, but most importantly of all from the survivors’ perspective, it delivered real accountability. Those in authority who had failed young people were held to account. The chief executive, the director of children’s services, and the police and crime commissioner all resigned. That is not going to happen in Telford—this inquiry makes quite sure of that.

In the end, this is about accountability. Those in authority are accountable to local people, and it is the job of MPs to ensure that they hold those in power to account. It is now time for the authorities in Telford to be open with the public about the cost of this inquiry, the envisaged timescale, the objectives and the possible outcomes, and then we can let local people be the judge. It is time to see this issue from the outside looking in, and I am grateful to the media for doing just that. Can those in authority really not see how the situation looks from the outside? Can they really not see how it appears to the hundreds of survivors and to our wider community?

Child sexual exploitation is a horrendous crime and of course blame lies with the perpetrators, but we cannot and must not ignore the fact that attitudes towards vulnerable young women in communities up and down the country played their part in allowing this crime to continue unchecked. In every case of child sexual exploitation, there is a sense that the system was just not on the victims’ side; that their experience was minimised; that somehow they were to blame; and that the authorities and those in positions of power just did not work for them.

Although much has changed and we see great improvements in Telford and elsewhere, I urge the Minister, who I hold in the highest regard, to do all he can to ensure that this inquiry does not become one more example of the way in which authorities so often fail the very people they are meant to serve.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill

Lucy Allan Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before coming to this place, I served on my city council, where for a number of years I had responsibility for Nottingham’s efforts to tackle domestic abuse and to support survivors. I learned many things during that period, but one thing has particularly stuck with me ever since: when a survivor—usually a woman—makes the decision to leave their abuser, the state must be there to wrap around that person. There can be no grey areas and no “I’ll call you back on Monday”. It must be immediate and comprehensive. Whether it is housing, support for children or fostering for pets, it has to be there. It is with that in mind that I rise to speak.

The Bill enjoys support on both sides of the House, as we have heard, and from the charities that work tirelessly to protect women and children fleeing abuse. The intentions behind the Bill are decent, and while we in this place may not directly see the impact of the decisions we take today, those decisions will change the lives of very vulnerable people and allow them to escape their abusers and start to live their life free from fear. Nevertheless, there are some grey areas of outstanding concern that I want to focus on briefly.

The first is reciprocal arrangements, which are covered in new clause 1. The nature of the abuse that a survivor is fleeing means that they might need to leave Nottingham and go to Birmingham or even Cardiff or Glasgow, and it is vital that they are not disadvantaged. I am grateful for the assurance we were offered—not this morning, as the Minister said, but this afternoon, in letter form—that the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Administrations are relaxed about their abilities to ensure such arrangements. Nevertheless, people change and circumstances change, and that letter will not be of much significance if co-operation is not properly monitored. That is all the new clause asks for, and whether it is accepted or not, I hope that the Government will continue to commit to that.

The Government have stated that the legislation will protect victims who need to move their secure tenancy across local authority boundaries and that amendment 1 is unnecessary because the courts and Government guidance state that the local connection test does not apply in domestic abuse cases. However, those who work on the ground know that that is not quite how it works. The organisations that work most closely with those fleeing abuse have made it clear that, as is so often the case, there is a difference between the best-intentioned Government guidance and the reality of the situation on the ground.

Women often have to flee across local authority boundaries to find safety, and we know that local authorities are at best inconsistent. In 2016-17, local housing teams prevented nearly a fifth of the women supported by Women’s Aid’s “No Woman Turned Away” project from making a valid homelessness application on the grounds of domestic abuse, for reasons including that they had no local connection. It is said in this place that the local connection test does not apply in domestic abuse cases, but it is not always filtering down. That is a good argument for putting that explicitly in the Bill, so that there is no doubt and no grey areas, and on the night or day when an individual leaves, whether they have a local connection or not, the expectation on the local authority is entirely clear.

Finally, on amendment 2 and the bedroom tax, I was really interested to hear from the Minister. She made it clear that this would happen in a very small number of cases, but I would be interested to hear what the evidence base was for that and what those numbers were. I am certain that none of us in this place would want finances to come into play when an individual is making the very difficult decision to leave their abuser. None of us would want that individual to be punished because the house they were moving into was deemed to have a spare room, because they were waiting to be reunited with their children or because of the way the housing stock we are talking about was structured. In Nottingham, there is not a suite of choices waiting for an individual, with the option of saying, “You’d be suitable for a one-bedroom place,” or, “You might be suitable for a three-bedroom place.” The fact of the matter is that we will be putting them wherever we can. I know that none of us would want them to be financially punished for that, which is an excellent reason for accepting amendment 2, so that we are very clear, because it is in the grey areas that we will struggle.

I am conscious that other Members are waiting to speak, so I will leave it there. I believe that the new clause and the amendments would strengthen the Bill. I do not think that much of their substance has been disagreed with; it is just about whether or not to write them down. I will make this clear argument: let us not leave it to guidance. Let us be explicitly, painfully, to-the-letter clear about the system that we are designing today. The consequences of it are life and death, so it is well worth our putting those words on the face of the Bill.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), who made insightful remarks. Today’s debate has been incredibly valuable and informative. I am so grateful to all Members who have come here to share their experience, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). Often we talk about her passion, for which she is renowned, but she brings to this place the very lucid voice of the women she has worked with and the chaos she has seen, and so often the work we do misses that voice. It is not just her passion for which we should be grateful, but her great experience and her capacity to bring it to us in this place in a way that we can all understand.

I would also like to comment on the hon. Lady’s remarks about children being taken into care as a result of domestic violence. She is absolutely right; the failure to protect so often causes women to lose their children to the care system, and anything we can do in this place to reduce that eventuality has to lessen some of the agony and pain that families go through in these circumstances.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

7. What progress his Department has made on the delivery of new homes.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

16. What progress his Department has made on the delivery of new homes.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)]

Last year, some 217,000 homes were added to our housing stock in England. We have set out bold and comprehensive reforms to deliver on average 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the 2020s in England, including in last week’s publication of the draft revised national planning policy framework.

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that we are committed to both reducing net migration to sustainable levels and building the homes that this country needs.

[Lucy Allan]

Telford is a rapidly growing new town in which thousands of new homes are built every year, but for too many new-build homeowners, the reality is unfinished communal areas, unadopted roads, failure to comply with section 106, developers failing to take responsibility and the local council passing the buck. What will the Secretary of State do to strengthen the rights of new-build homeowners?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that, shortly, the Government will announce the winning applicants to their social impact bond to provide funding for local authorities to improve outcomes in education, training and employment for care leavers.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

I, too, welcome the Minister to his position, and I know that he will be excellent in his role. Does he agree that no child should be taken into care if family support would allow them to stay safely at home? What will he do to provide more support to struggling families to prevent children from being taken into care?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for her warm words and wholeheartedly agree that, where possible, children are of course looked after best by their own families. That is why the troubled families programme, in which we are investing £1 billion through to 2020, is working with those families to reduce the need for children to go into care. I am delighted to tell her that the results in December show a decrease in the number of children in need in that programme.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I welcome the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) to her place on the Front Bench—a promotion richly deserved. May I say that I am looking forward to knocking on her door and having a conversation about the contents of my speech?

I fully support the Bill, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for her absolute persistence in trying to see these changes put in place. It is a testament to her dedication and the dogged support of so many people and organisations across the country that the Government are, I understand, content to allow the Bill to proceed this afternoon.

I want to address quickly the development of the regulation of standards in the private rented sector that affects my constituency of West Ham. I know that hon. Members have noticed that my borough of Newham has been largely successful in its application for permission to renew its licensing scheme for private sector landlords. I am very grateful to the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), who took the time to listen properly to our case and acted positively on it. In fact, he was in his place earlier, and I had hoped he might stay so that I could thank him formally and publicly from the Labour Benches.

However, the permission excludes one area of my constituency—the E20 postcode, which includes much of Stratford. I think I understand why the previous Minister did that, but I believe it to be a mistake. Poor-quality housing and abuses by private sector landlords exist in E20, just as they do in every part of my constituency and, indeed, of our country. The exclusion of E20 will make it far easier for these abuses to continue, and I am worried that it may make E20 more of a draw for rogue landlords if it is the only place in which they can take advantage of Newham’s high housing demand while avoiding enhanced enforcement by the council. I will get in touch with the Minister at a later date to offer her a cup of tea and a bun, should she like it—or even something a little stronger, after dry January has finished—so that we can talk this through.

While I am talking to Members on the Conservative Benches, may I say to the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) that I would really like to invite her to come to West Ham? If she has a look at one of our enforcement visits and sees what a difference it makes, I may be able to persuade her, too, that this is a journey she might like to take with her Front Benchers and she might start to accept that this is possibly the way forward. We have decent cafés in West Ham, and I am happy to take her for a latte or a cappuccino, or whatever she might desire, in order to win her support.

[Lucy Allan]

It is excellent that we have this cross-party debate and that we are all working together, and I thank the hon. Lady for her invitation.

[Lyn Brown]

Excellent. My office will be in touch with the hon. Lady’s to see if we can get a date.

Enabling local authorities to take tough action against rogue landlords is very important and can be a real help in driving up standards. The Bill would tackle the problem at the root by clarifying, updating and strengthening the right of tenants to live in a rental property that is fit to be called a home. As we have heard, a minority of landlords make huge profits from their tenants, who sometimes live in appalling conditions.

Before Christmas, I mentioned the case of a man who was found living in a 1 metre by 2 metres space under some stairs, in a property with 11 other people and with electrical and fire hazards to boot. On the same day, that Newham enforcement team also found three people who were paying £200 a month for a space in an outside shed, and four other separate families who had been crammed into the main house. I believe that it will begin to solve the problem of abused tenants if all landlords, from the beginning of a tenancy, have a clear duty to provide those tenants with basic liveable conditions, and that should be enforced not just by our councils, but by the courts.