Business of the House

Alexander Stafford Excerpts

2nd reading & 3rd reading
Thursday 1st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I have more confidence in my farmers; I think they can compete with the best in the world. The Australians are fantastic farmers who have high standards of animal welfare. We should not be so frightened, nervy and feeble in feeling that a bit of competition from Australia will do us harm. It will do us all good, and our farmers will flourish and prosper as they get access to new markets too.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I need not remind anyone in this House about the scale and horror of the child sexual exploitation scandal that blighted Rotherham and affected many of my constituents, including courageous whistleblower and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse. That these children—because that is what many of them were when the abuse took place—were failed so monumentally by the system in the first place is horrific, but living as a survivor of sexual exploitation or any form of sexual assault is fraught with many issues, particularly for those girls and women who became pregnant as a result of their ordeal and are now trying to raise a family.

The children born to survivors of sexual assault should not, as currently happens, be automatically identified as being at risk of abuse, and their mothers, many of whom have been failed once already, should not be threatened with the removal of their children on the basis of no other evidence than that they themselves were once victims. Does the Leader of the House agree that these women and their children should be better supported by social services, and can we have a debate in Government time on the disturbing findings of “The Case for Change” report, published by the chair of the independent review of children’s social care, so that we may right this historic wrong, which is still victimising survivors of child sexual exploitation and sexual assault today?