Child Abuse Inquiry

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I can give my right hon. Friend that reassurance. We had previously been waiting for the chairman to be in place before the inquiry set forth on its work. I think it is important that it does start now. As I have said, it is possible for it to start without a chairman, because it is a panel of members. I think everybody in this House wants to see this work started, and to get it going so we can see results coming from the work of the inquiry, because that is what is due to survivors. I am sure that that sentiment will be supported across the whole House.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I also welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. One of the shocking facts in historical child abuse cases is that institutional and wider public attitudes at the time enabled abusers to prey on children at will because children were not listened to. Does the Home Secretary agree that part of this inquiry’s job in learning from the past must be to bring forward recommendations about how we tackle wider cultural attitudes that mean that vulnerable children are still too often blamed for their own abuse because of how they look or what they wear?

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree. What has been shocking in the Rotherham case and in the hon. Lady’s report into Greater Manchester—and we have also seen this in the historical cases—is the fact that those who were being abused often raised their voices but were not heard because they were not believed, or because, and I think this is truly shocking, people felt that those young people were in a circumstance such that they should not be listened to. As the hon. Lady said, in some sense this was seen as just the sort of thing that happened to those sorts of young people. This is an appalling attitude. We have seen it, and, sadly, we see it still today, in the work that is being done out there, as the hon. Lady has revealed. We see police officers, people in social services and others almost casting to one side certain individuals and not being willing to take up their cases. It is time that people looked not at the credibility of the individual, but at the credibility of the allegation.

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

This is an important aspect. The Department of Health is considering the mental health needs of those who have been the victim of sexual exploitation of this type, and what action is necessary. I believe that that has also been looked at in a very real sense in terms of the Rotherham experience, but it is being looked at by the Department more widely.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Child sexual exploitation takes many forms and mostly involves single offenders, but if we are to learn from what happened in Derby, Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, Oxford and Stockport to prevent the horrific rape and sexual abuse by groups of men from happening to other children, we need to be better able to identify not only the children at risk, but the men who are likely to become perpetrators of this crime. Does the Home Secretary think that the overarching inquiry should be looking at the attitudes and behaviours of offenders as well as the national groups, so that we can learn from that and are better able to protect communities from child sexual exploitation and work with all communities?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady raises an important aspect. I would point out that in one of the very early cases in which perpetrators were brought to justice, that success was the result of a very good piece of work done on that occasion by Derbyshire police—I think in Operation Retriever. The overarching inquiry was set up with a prime purpose of looking at the historic incidents and allegations and the lessons that needed to be learned from those, and whether more needed to be done now to ensure that horrific crimes of that type were not being perpetrated today. I will be talking to Professor Jay about how the Rotherham report work can feed into that inquiry, but I think that is where the focus must be—to ensure that state and non-state institutions are behaving in a way that ensures that these things cannot happen in the first place, and when they do, are taken seriously and dealt with properly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am very happy to agree with my hon. Friend, not least because I was in Yorkshire before the Tour started last week to see the police preparations for the operation, which were extremely thorough, as we would expect. The fact that everyone in Yorkshire—I hope it is the same for everyone in Essex and London today—was able to enjoy a peaceful event, with the world watching us, is a tribute to the calm and well-ordered way the British police go about their business.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I understand that the National Crime Agency has suggested to chief constables that they should think carefully about requesting a registered intermediary. The number of requests has increased, and with that, of course, have come consequent costs to police budgets. Does the Home Secretary not think that the way forward might be a central budget for intermediaries requested by the police, so that the best evidence can always be obtained from vulnerable witnesses?

[Damian Green]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point, because clearly registered intermediaries do a good job. I will look at the details of what she says the NCA is saying, because the system does not appear to be working badly. I will certainly look at any details she may care to provide me with.

Child Abuse

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I certainly think it important for other databases to be interrogated and looked into. As I indicated in response to an earlier question from the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), there are issues around access to certain matters that relate to secret and intelligence material. I am sure, however, that there are ways of ensuring that all appropriate material—whether it be appropriate for the review or for the inquiry panel—will be looked into.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

In the 1970s and ’80s, there was a confusion between sexual liberation and sexual exploitation, and that gave cover for the abuse of some children to escape challenge. Much progress has been made, but victims of child abuse are still being blamed for their own exploitation. Does the Home Secretary agree that if we are to make significant progress in protecting our children, the independent inquiry panel needs to look at current attitudes as well as understand historical attitudes?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the atmosphere and attitudes against which these abuses took place. We need to be very clear about what amounts to abuse today. That is why, in a related context, the Home Office has run a “This is Abuse” campaign for teenagers to help them identify when abuse is taking place. Sadly, some might have seen abusive relationships that were portrayed to them as normal. We need to ensure that everybody understands what abuse is, and understands their ability to say no.

Modern-day Slavery

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing this important debate. I know that she is absolutely passionate about helping the victims of trafficking, and I totally agree with her that the Bill offers us the opportunity to do so. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who has had such shocking personal experience of slavery in his constituency. I totally agree with him that getting the public involved, making them more aware and encouraging them to mind other people’s business as well as their own is a very good way forward.

I want to focus my remarks on how trafficked children are responded to and, in most cases, let down by our care system. I am the chair of the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults. Last year, we carried out a joint parliamentary inquiry, with the support of the Children’s Society, into children who go missing from care. It highlighted the vulnerability and specific needs of trafficked children, and we found that trafficked children are particularly let down by the care system and that their needs are being ignored. Part of the problem is that the authorities view child trafficking as an immigration control issue.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. What are her views on the particular issue of assessing the age of children? I totally agree that the fact that these are vulnerable trafficked children is not often a priority when considering their immigration status.

[Ann Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I will come on to the identification and assessment of children later, and I think that she will probably agree with me.

Hundreds of trafficked children disappear from care every year, many within 48 hours. Some run away shortly after arriving in the country, while on their way to children’s homes. According to figures given to our inquiry, it is estimated that about 60% of those who make it into local authority care go missing, and that almost two thirds of those who go missing are never found. Our inquiry, which made a number of key recommendations, found that existing child protection safeguards are not triggered for trafficked children.

Let us consider how a trafficked child might enter the UK. Many are smuggled through ports in the backs of lorries, but many others arrive at a UK airport accompanied by an adult trafficker. The adult abandons the child in the airport with no identification, instructing them to claim asylum, while the adult leaves the country as a transit passenger. When picked up by the airport authorities, the child is put into the care of children’s services and taken to a home or hostel. Typically, a phone number has been sewn inside their clothing, and when it is safe to do so, they contact a handler and then disappear. Traffickers also get to know where the children’s homes are situated.

One of the reasons why many non-British trafficked children go missing from care is that they are groomed so effectively by their traffickers: they are so terrified of what might happen to them or their families if they break their bond or tell the authorities that they run back to their traffickers. Being exploited for labour is the most common form of exploitation of trafficked children, followed by sexual exploitation, cannabis cultivation, domestic servitude, benefit fraud, street crime and forced marriage. Many of the victims are subject to multiple forms of exploitation.

Sue Berelowitz, the deputy Children’s Commissioner, told our inquiry how trafficked children are placed in inappropriate accommodation, which leaves them desperately vulnerable to further exploitation. In 2009, the Home Affairs Committee report on human trafficking expressed alarm that

“traffickers may be using the care home system for vulnerable children as holding pens for their victims until they are ready to pick them up.”

Such a situation is partly the result of a lack of awareness about the indicators that a child might have been trafficked, as well as a lack of knowledge about the steps to take to prevent trafficked children from going missing, such as placing them away from their trafficker’s local area. Budget constraints in local authorities and a culture that prioritises immigration control and criminal prosecution over child protection, combined with a lack of specialist accommodation or foster care, also contribute to the inadequate support received by these young people.

Already this year, the national referral mechanism has identified 1,500 child and adult victims of trafficking, according to the UK Human Trafficking Centre. However, the data on children are patchy and incomplete. That is why the all-party group recommended a comprehensive and independent national system of data collection for trafficked children who go missing. Under the recent reforms to the data collection system for local authorities, it does not include data on trafficked children, nationality or immigration status.

Many professionals agree that the best solution to help trafficked children break contact with their traffickers is to use specialist foster carers who are trained to identify and respond to the specific issues and needs of trafficked children, and who know how to keep them safe. We recommended that the pilot scheme that was run by the Department for Education and Barnardo’s to train more foster parents to support trafficked children and/or sexually exploited children should be rolled out nationally.

The provision of specialist accommodation for child victims of trafficking is very limited. Many such children are being accommodated in bed and breakfasts, hostels and supported lodgings, which do not provide the level of supervision and specialist support that is needed to prevent them from going missing or being targeted for further exploitation. That is despite the guidance that was issued by the DFE and the Home Office in 2012, which states that trafficked children should be placed in foster care or residential care and that the local authority should assess the child’s vulnerability to the continuing control of their traffickers and take into account the risk that they will go missing.

A recent “Newsnight” investigation revealed that 15,728 children aged 16 and 17 had asked local authorities with help for homelessness. Of the local authorities that responded to a freedom of information request, 148 had housed children unlawfully in Band B accommodation in 2012, despite statutory guidance stating that such accommodation is not suitable for children. That is a problem for trafficked children because most of them will be in that age group.

As I have said, trafficked children often go missing before their level of vulnerability has been assessed by children’s services and before identification has taken place. That is why I support the recommendation of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the Association of Chief Police Officers that photos of the children should be taken and recorded along with their passport number, nationality, fingerprints and DNA. That would mean that if a child turned up later in a cannabis factory, or was a victim of sexual exploitation or had been charged with an offence in a different part of the country, they could be identified as a trafficked child and the right level of intervention could be used to safeguard them.

To re-emphasise what my hon. Friend the Member for Slough said, it is important to understand that children do not volunteer the information that they have been trafficked. If we want to break the bond with the trafficker, the child must be given an advocate, guardian or social worker at the point of entry to the country to support them and encourage the formation of a trusting relationship, so that they have someone to turn to other than the trafficker. In recent debates in this House, we have talked about the importance of communicating with children and giving them a voice. That is all the more important when a child arrives in the country unable to speak the language, with no understanding of our laws or customs, and fearful of what might happen if they divulge anything to the authorities.

Only five of the 64 local authorities that responded to the all-party group’s call for evidence last year collect data on the nationality of children in care. Only two authorities, Hillingdon and Portsmouth, collect data on whether children have been trafficked. Witnesses told our inquiry that professionals often had a negative attitude towards trafficked children and that that had implications for the way in which such children were treated. We recommended that the DFE should lead a programme of work to support local authorities to meet the needs of trafficked children through existing child protection frameworks. Local authorities could also reflect on the needs of trafficked children in their annual sufficiency surveys, which show how they will provide care to meet the needs of looked-after children in their areas.

A major factor in the failure to protect trafficked children is the lack of knowledge among professionals of the indicators that a child might have been trafficked. Children and Families Across Borders, which trains local authorities, reported to the all-party group that 98% of social workers have not heard of the national referral mechanism and have no clear understanding of the issues involved in identifying or protecting trafficked children. The inquiry heard from practitioners and the police that effective multi-agency working would improve information sharing and strategic responses. We heard evidence of consistent failure in intelligence-sharing between the UK Border Agency, the police, and statutory and local authorities about organised criminal networks and trafficking trends.

Pat Geenty, the ACPO lead on missing persons, told the inquiry how the issue of missing persons needs to be recognised, and he referred to a multi-agency environment. He said:

“For me the Holy Grail is MASH, the multi-agency safeguarding hub, in every police force in the country, if we can get those in place and we can bring our local authorities and our different agencies together in one room, all referrals going into case management, we would have an opportunity of sharing information, sharing data much more effectively”.

I am aware that progress is being made on that, and that many multi-agency safeguarding hubs are being set up, but it is patchy across the country. If the statistics on missing persons that are shared do not properly identify children at risk of being trafficked because there is no efficient data collection system, those children will continue to fall through the net.

Hillingdon borough council has shown what can be done and reduced the number of unaccompanied children who have gone missing. My concern is that other authorities that do not have those levels of expertise may not identify as having been trafficked children who may have been transported many miles from their original point of entry. We therefore need better data collection, and better understanding in agencies with responsibility for protecting children of indicators that a child may have been trafficked. We also need safe places for children to try and break the relationship between trafficker and child, improved identification of children at an early stage, better information sharing between agencies, and a trusted person for the child to relate to as soon as they are assessed as being likely to have been trafficked.

In other words, those children must be included in the existing child protection system so that, for example, actions taken to safeguard any trafficked children in an area are included in the annual reports of the local safeguarding children boards. We will not stop the evil of trafficking children for exploitation until the people who do it believe that they are taking more risk than the profit they are offered merits. One way of doing that is to ensure that their victims do not become invisible and lost in our country.

Irrespective of the immigration status of these children, they are still children and entitled to the same protection as other children in the country. I welcome the Government’s progress in introducing a modern slavery Bill, but I hope it will include practical measures that will better protect those children. I also hope it will disrupt the activities of the evil men and women who see all children as commodities for profit, because when their exploitation of one child is disrupted, that protects other children who might otherwise have become their victims.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is right that that kind of work between different police forces is important. The national police working group on child abuse and investigation has representatives from Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish forces, while the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre works with colleagues across the UK in combating this particularly abhorrent crime.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Children going missing for repeated periods of time is one of the key indicators of sexual exploitation. It is important that data on missing children is considered alongside other data from health, schools and children’s services better to identify children at risk of sexual exploitation and to disrupt sexual grooming at an early stage. Does the Minister agree that, although it is good to see the number of rising prosecutions for child sexual exploitation and the lengthy prison sentences for offenders, prevention is the best outcome for children?

[Damian Green]

I agree with the hon. Lady, who I know has a long record of constructive activity in this field, that missing children are particularly vulnerable. That is why the new taskforce I am chairing has on it significant representation from the Department for Education, so that those who are looking after the children can try to reduce the numbers that go missing in the first place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Browne]

The hon. Gentleman touches on an important point. When people talk about legal highs, there is a tendency to believe that just because a substance is legal, it cannot be harmful. That is certainly not the case, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley). That was a severe warning. The Government try to protect the public through appropriate changes to the law, including the two that I have mentioned, which take effect from today.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

15. What training is undertaken by police forces in respect of child sexual exploitation cases.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

All front-line police officers receive training in protecting and safeguarding children. Dedicated child protection police officers also receive specialist training in investigating child abuse cases, and the College of Policing is delivering additional training for front-line staff so that they can recognise, protect and refer children at risk of child sexual exploitation.

[Ann Coffey]

Children who are being sexually exploited are sometimes involved in antisocial behaviour, theft and other criminal offences. Often, the underlying problem is missed because the child is perceived to be an offender rather than a victim. Does the Minister agree that the training for all police officers should include an understanding of the behaviour associated with child sexual exploitation, including criminal behaviour, so that sexually exploited children are identified at an early age and police resources are used as effectively as possible?

[Damian Green]

The hon. Lady’s point about training is right and I mentioned training in my answer. I am sure she will welcome the fact that the College of Policing and the Crown Prosecution Service will shortly consult on a fundamental review of investigative guidance on child sex offences, precisely so that we can develop greater expertise and sensitivity throughout the system.

Violence against Women and Girls

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who has done some fantastic work in the area of improving online protection for children.

Last week, I visited the St Mary’s sexual assault referral centre, which was the first of its kind to be established in the UK. There are now 41 across England and Wales. St Mary’s sees women, men and children, the youngest being three weeks old and the eldest 93 years old, and has more than 1,000 cases a year, of which just under half are children. The centre provides a range of services, including forensic medical examinations to collect evidence and document injuries; counselling, including pre-trial therapy; child advocates to support children and families; a young person’s advocate aimed at identifying those at risk of being sexually exploited; and independent sexual violence advisers, who offer practical support through the process.

The recent tragic suicide of Frances Andrade demonstrates the extent of the psychological damage suffered as a result of sexual assault, its enduring nature and the risk to victims of court proceedings. St Mary’s provides a holistic service to meet individual needs so that victims do not have to fight their way through various referral criteria and thresholds to get help. It is a valuable and important resource with a committed and experienced team.

Greater Manchester police have predominantly funded the sexual assault referral centre, including follow-on psychosocial support, in the belief, supported by evidence, that if victims feel supported they are more likely to have confidence and therefore continue with the criminal justice process. There are concerns, however, that changes as part of the restructuring of the NHS in April 2013, and changes in police funding in 2015, will result in deficit funding and the fragmentation of services that are currently offered at St Mary’s. Without those services, an 80-year-old woman would not be able to talk about the abuse that she has kept secret for years, and children who have been sexually exploited would not get the support that they need to feel confident enough to be a witness against their abuser in court. I would be grateful if the Minister looked into that for me.

Of course it would be better if children never had to be referred to St Mary’s, as the team there would agree, but that means that we need much earlier intervention in children’s lives. I have talked to the team working with sexually exploited children referred by the police as the result of an investigation, and they told me that children were sometimes reluctant to talk to them as they did not initially see themselves as sexually exploited. It is horrifying that many sexually exploited children are subjected to intimidation, coercion, blackmail and threats of violence, but it is equally shocking that others think their abuser cares about them.

To understand what we need to put in place to prevent violence and the abuse of children, we need to understand the long, sad journey of some children to becoming victims of sexual exploitation. They are often the type of neglected children about whom Action for Children talked in its recent report—children who feel so alone and so lacking in self-esteem that they welcome any attention, and who have no understanding of what a caring relationship is about because they have never seen one. Often, such children never reach the threshold for intervention by any services, so their neglect goes undetected. We can see why they are vulnerable to sexual grooming and how important it is to identify vulnerable children in their early childhood.

That is why I am impressed by Stockport’s supporting families pathway, which enables referrals to all council and other local services to be recorded on a single shared database. That means that a complete picture of a child’s life can be built up, and there can be early detection of children who are struggling. At the moment, the model that we have means that children have to reach a certain threshold to be referred to services, and that threshold is often reached far too late in a child’s life. The sharing of data across all agencies would enable a vulnerable child to be identified much earlier. The question would then be not whether their need was great enough to access services but what would be the most appropriate intervention that we could make to help them.

Of course, schools have an important role in safeguarding children. I believe that compulsory sex and relationship education in schools would give children and young people the confidence to reject inappropriate relationships.

[Claire Perry]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the consultation on computing content is an encouraging part of the consideration of the new curriculum? That includes communicating safely and respectfully online, keeping personal information private and general common sense in the internet space. That would go some way towards dealing with some of the problems that she has addressed.

[Ann Coffey]

I do agree, and I was interested to hear the hon. Lady talk about that yesterday.

Sex and relationships education in schools is very important, because it can help children to understand when they are being groomed by older men for sexual exploitation or involved in sexually coercive relationships by their peers. Both the Director of Public Prosecutions and the deputy Children’s Commissioner have spoken recently about the impact of pornography on young men who commit sexual and relationship violence. I was also concerned to read in a report by the chief inspector of probation, out last week, that some professionals fail to combat sexual offending by children because they miss warning signs. That report, conducted by probation inspectors, studied 24 teenage boys with convictions ranging from indecent assault to rape and found that opportunities to intervene when the offender was young had been missed in nearly every case.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Action is needed not just when the offender is young but when the victim is young. It seems clear from the reports that we read of the case in Oxford that the police did not act fast enough when young women first disclosed that they were unhappy about how their controllers were treating them.

[Ann Coffey]

I agree, of course, and as I have just said, it is important to identify child sex offenders as well as children who are sexually offended against.

Sex and relationship education has an important role in challenging at an early age attitudes in boys that result in sexually offending behaviour. With better inter-agency working, data collecting, early intervention and compulsory sex and relationship education in schools, we can make a start on preventing harm from coming to our children, but I fear that centres such as St Mary’s will be needed for some time. I believe that without St Mary’s, there would be more tragic deaths among victims of sexual abuse. We want a better world in which victims are not afraid to speak out and perpetrators cannot rely on the silence of their victims. It is really good to see support from all parties for the excellent motion that my hon. Friend has tabled, because each of us is trying to make a difference in our own different ways. After all, 1 billion voices cannot be wrong.

Child Sexual Exploitation

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) on her excellent speech today, and on the major part she is playing in the Home Affairs Committee’s ongoing inquiry into localised child grooming.

This debate is taking place following unprecedented publicity about child sexual exploitation and an abundance of high-profile and shocking cases. One of the most shocking facts is that we still do not know the extent of child sexual exploitation in this country. In Greater Manchester we have a very proactive police force. We currently have more than 50 police officers dedicated solely to working full time on child sexual grooming investigations; we have 72 more dedicated to rape allegations, including child rape, and 60 more on “inter-familial” abuse, which includes sexual offences against children.

Detectives are investigating three more major alleged incidents involving young girls after doubling the number of officers investigating claims of abuse. It brings the total number of recently completed or ongoing investigations into the abuse of teenage girls to six. Nine more men from Rochdale are due to appear in court in the coming weeks following the conviction of nine others in May, and a trial is due to start at Manchester Crown court in January involving a similar investigation which involves girls from my constituency of Stockport.

I take the opportunity to congratulate Greater Manchester police on their dedication in bringing to justice the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes, but I point out to the Minister that these investigations take a lot of resources, and more resources will be needed in the future if we are serious about tackling child sexual exploitation.

So the debate is very timely and takes place against the background of a series of fast-moving events. More than a dozen inquiries of various types have been announced recently into allegations of child sex abuse, amid ongoing concerns that authorities have not taken the claims of victims seriously enough. Over the past 20 years we have seen more than 32 public inquiries into all aspects of public life; in relation to children they included the inquiries into the Soham murders, Victoria Climbié, and north Wales care homes. From all those inquiries we are awash with a sea of recommendations. Some have been implemented, such as improved safeguarding measures to protect children, including enhanced criminal record checks introduced by the last Labour Government. Other recommendations have not.

I was recently struck by the comments of Lord Levy, who chaired the Staffordshire pindown inquiry reporting in 1991, which looked into the practice of keeping children in pindown rooms for weeks and months. Lord Levy, reflecting on what had happened to his recommendations at a later date, said:

“The recommendations resulting from the Pindown Inquiry were variously acted upon, watered down, or ignored.”

I was also interested to read Lord Laming’s 2009 report into progress since the Climbié inquiry in 2001, which made more than 100 recommendations. On inter-agency working, he said that

“it is evident that the challenges of working across organisational boundaries continue to pose barriers in practice”.

I think that meant that things were not getting much better.

Better inter-agency working has been among the recommendations of many inquiries, including the parliamentary inquiry into children missing from care, which was conducted by the all-party group for looked-after children and care leavers and the all-party group for runaway and missing children and adults, which I chair. We found that the police and the Department for Education were not even collecting the same data on children missing from care, so that repeated missing episodes—one of the key indicators that sexual abuse might be taking place—were not being acted upon and children were being placed at risk of sexual exploitation.

Local safeguarding children boards are key to preventing sexual exploitation. They should be ensuring that local agencies are working effectively together, sharing information from health, police, schools and youth services to identify children who may be at risk and developing interventions to keep children safe and to stop them becoming victims of sexual exploitation. But we are a long way from that in many parts of the country, so children are facing a postcode lottery in protection from sexual exploitation.

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) accepted our recommendations and I am very sorry to have seen him go. I look forward to the actions proposed by the DFE and the Home Office in response, so that in future data on missing children will be collected in such a way that it is a useful tool in identifying children at risk of sexual exploitation. I have to say that one of the concerns, however, is the new definition of missing. It is important that the new Association of Chief Police Officers guidance has enough safeguarding procedures so that the significance of repeated absences that are not recorded as missing is not overlooked and underplayed. We all know that repeated absences are an indicator that a child may be being sexually exploited on a regular basis.

I also think it is important that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary makes the inspection of police forces’ performance in this area a priority. I know this is a difficult and complex area, and that procedures or statutory guidance are by themselves not enough, although it is not acceptable when they are ignored. There is a statutory obligation for police forces to return missing statistics to the Missing Persons Bureau and yet it was only last year that all police forces returned their statistics to the bureau. So the Minister can appreciate our concern to ensure that all police forces take that seriously.

To return to Lord Levy, he said:

“We really need to bolster the procedures for ensuring that the lessons and recommendations from often expensive inquiries are carried through and actually acted upon.”

I agree, and I think before any more new inquiries are announced we should certainly find a way of reviewing recommendations of past inquiries.

I think that the Children’s Commissioner, in her newly strengthened role as a voice and advocate for children, should be given responsibility for ensuring that the recommendations of any future public inquiries relating to children are implemented and that she should report regularly to Parliament on progress towards their implementation. That might have the additional benefit of stopping the Government’s announcing of public inquiries simply to deal with the immediate pressure to solve a difficult problem. It is one thing for a Government to announce an inquiry when they know that they can kick any recommendations into the long grass; it is quite another when they might be held to account for those recommendations.

Since 2007 there have been 557 serious case reviews, although not all have been the result of child sexual exploitation. It is not clear to me what actually happens to the recommendations of those reviews, besides sitting with the local safeguarding children board. Recommendations relating to sexually exploited children in one area need to be learnt by local safeguarding children boards everywhere. After all, they serve as local inquiries. In the same way that the implementation of recommendations from public inquiries should be monitored, I believe that the recommendations from serous case reviews should be monitored, and perhaps that should be done by the Children’s Improvement Board. I also believe that a serious case review should always be undertaken if a child has been harmed by sexual exploitation, which is not currently the case.

Throughout all the inquiries and investigations into child sexual exploitation, we hear that children feel that they are not listened to. I believe that, above all else, we must strengthen their voice. That was the main message of the young people from one of the Children’s Society’s local projects when they gave evidence to our all-party group’s inquiry into children who go missing from care. It is a depressingly familiar story in most sexual abuse cases. The victims felt powerless, and one of our findings was that the professionals who were there to help them treated them as troublesome, a nuisance and a drain on resources, rather than as victims. That theme ran through the hugely important report from Barnardo’s, “Puppet on a string”, published in January 2011, which said that too often the tell-tale signs that a child was being abused were overlooked.

Children feel that their voice is not being heard, but often it is also those with responsibility for protecting them who do not want to listen. It is hard to listen, because that means having to act—and that might make life uncomfortable. We must strengthen the voice of children themselves. In our society, adults talk a lot about our rights, which in many cases do not exist, but we mean the right to a voice—our voice. I welcome the proposals to strengthen the role of the Children’s Commissioner, but she cannot be the voice of all children at all times and in all situations. Children used to be seen and not heard, and now they are sometimes heard. Somehow, we must move on so that they are always heard.

I strongly support compulsory sex and relationship education in schools, which is the Labour’s party’s policy. If children are to speak out, they must first feel confident that what is happening to them is wrong, and that is why sex and relationship education in schools is so important. They need to know—indeed, they are entitled to know—about issues such as sexual consent, what sexual coercion and exploitation is and how to shape healthy relationships and respect for each other, as well as to be alerted to signs that they are being sexually groomed. That will give them the confidence to reject inappropriate relationships, which is important in relation not only to grooming by older men for sexual exploitation, but to sexually coercive relationships by peers.

We know that harmful attitudes and behaviours are developed at a young age, and there is growing evidence about the impact of pornography on boys’ attitudes to girls. It is a problem that boys are accessing adult websites that give them a distorted attitude. It gives them a sense of entitlement, which means that they might touch a girl inappropriately and use bullying or coercive behaviour. That may explain the findings of a recent YouGov poll conducted by the Schools Safe 4 Girls campaign, in which a third of 16 to 18-year-old girls said they had been touched inappropriately at school.

Peer-on-peer exploitation is a very difficult issue, and the report by the Deputy Children’s Commissioner on gang and peer-on-peer sexual exploitation is due later this month. The perpetrators themselves are children, and that is an even more powerful reason for compulsory sex and relationship education in schools to balance what many boys see on adult websites. Boys need to be supported to form positive and respectful attitudes to girls and women. They need to understand that abuse can have a long-lasting impact, and not only physical, mental and emotional harm, but damage to a girl’s education and future.

Of course we need better inter-agency working and a better job to be done by local safeguarding children boards, but we also need to give children the knowledge to protect themselves. There is good practice around, and I am delighted about how sex and relationship education is being delivered in Stockport primary and secondary schools. Workshops, funded by Stockport council and Comic Relief, on sexual bullying and unhealthy relationships are being delivered in all local secondary schools by Stockport without Abuse, formerly the Stockport Women’s Aid group. The workshops are now being extended to year 6 pupils in primary schools in the borough and a new project will start at the end of this month that involves training young people to become “peer educators” to raise awareness of sexual harassment. The project involves Stockport council’s safeguarding unit, the Brinnington education achievement partnership and Stockport Without Abuse.

After my parliamentary debate on sexting last year, I was invited to see a film produced by two pupils at Harrytown high school. It was based on real-life situations and showed the consequences of uploading or texting indecent images. It is very important that we involve young people in that kind of work, as they will listen to other young people better than they will listen to adults. The more information children and young people receive in schools to prepare them for the world they face, the better, but that is not being done everywhere. We all know that knowledge is power, and power is what victims of sexual abuse throughout the ages have sadly lacked. Well-informed, confident children with a strong voice are less likely to become victims.

In conclusion, it is important that we learn the lessons of the past and understand the risks that children will be exposed to in the future. Only then will we be able to make significant headway in protecting children from sexual exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Browne]

I am grateful for that intervention, in which an important point was raised. Of course, changes have been made to try to make it easier for victims to tell the truth in court, but we will look again at what further improvements can be made and I shall share that request with Ministers across the Department.

Finally, let me mention what we are doing about the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about the strong link between children who go missing and child sexual exploitation. Research has shown that children are more likely than adults to go missing, placing them in risky situations, increasing their vulnerability to a range of issues and, as we are increasingly aware, placing many of those vulnerable young people at greater risk of child sexual exploitation. As children are particularly vulnerable to harm and exploitation while missing, the Government have put in place a tailored response to missing children issues by transferring responsibility for national missing children services to CEOP from 1 July 2011. We wish to see further improvements in work in that area.

In conclusion, let me reiterate—

[Ann Coffey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Browne]

I will not, because of the strictures put in place by Mr Deputy Speaker.

Let me reiterate the Government’s commitment to tackle child sexual exploitation head on and to ensure that those that have suffered abuse can come forward knowing that action will taken. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in her statement to the House on 6 November: “If you have been a victim of child abuse and you go to the police about what you have been through, people in positions of authority and responsibility should not and will not shirk their duty to support you.” That is our strong message today in this important debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to it.

Child Abuse Allegations (North Wales)

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes, indeed I am. This investigation provides a good example of the benefits of having a central authority—a central body—that can draw resource from a number of areas, particularly the specialist resource from CEOP and SOCA, and bring that to bear. Before the invitation came from the chief constable of North Wales police we of course discussed with Keith Bristow his ability, and that of the various assets under him, to undertake this, and he is clear that he is able to do so.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I, too, thank the Home Secretary for her statement. There is a wide difference between police forces in not only how they respond to allegations of child sexual exploitation, but how well they currently assess risks to children in their area. What has happened to these children in the past is terrible and we must do all we can to ensure that we safeguard children from sexual abuse. Does she agree that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary should make it a priority to inspect police forces to see how well they safeguard children in their area?

[Mrs May]

One issue that HMIC will be examining in its work on Savile and on the lessons learned from this north Wales investigation and, if necessary, others, is how the police deal with these matters. One of HMIC’s tasks will be to ensure that forces are taking those lessons seriously and embedding them in what they do. Of course, once the college of policing is up and running, it will also be a body with responsibility for developing standards and good practice in a number of areas, and I would expect this to be one of those areas.