Missing Persons

Debate between Ann Coffey and Bob Stewart

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Dobbin. Every year, an astonishing 250,000 people in the UK are reported missing to the police, and two thirds of those are under the age of 18. Occasionally, the country can be overwhelmed by public anxiety when faced with awful child abduction cases, such as that of Madeleine McCann, but we remain unaware of the vast majority of cases. I shall talk today about some of the key aspects of the missing persons phenomenon and the problems that families face when their loved ones go missing. I shall also highlight the current risk of closure to both the UK Missing Persons Bureau and the charity Missing People—two agencies that work hand in hand to help missing people and the devastated families they leave behind.

First, let us consider the scale of the challenge. Three quarters of the disappearances reported to the police are resolved in two days, but a significant minority—about 20,000—last longer than a week and 2,500 last in excess of a year. Adults are more likely to remain missing for longer periods than young people, and the National Policing Improvement Agency recently revealed that about 940 bodies found in the UK over the past 50 years remain unidentified. In the region of 10 new cases of unidentified bodies are registered with the Missing Persons Bureau each month.

About 100,000 children aged under 16 run away each year, and 20% will be at high risk of being hurt or harmed. They might sleep rough or stay with someone they have just met. Research suggests that they are at serious risk, exposed to violence, criminality, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and trafficking. Other missing people are adults fleeing dysfunctional relationships or experiencing problems at work, or who have become detached from their families through drug and alcohol use and mental health problems. A smaller proportion of disappearances—still a significant number—result from a person going missing unintentionally. Examples include dementia sufferers becoming lost, or people having accidents or becoming victims of abduction and serious crime.

It is estimated that more than 1,000 missing people, including about 50 children, are found dead each year. These include people who take their own lives, who have an accident, who become lost and die of exposure, and who are victims of crime. The problem is far more widespread than most people would ever imagine.

As a local MP and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, I was interested in a recent exercise by Greater Manchester police. They tweeted every incident in which they were involved for 24 hours. In that short space of time, there were 127 calls relating to missing people, including five relating to missing children in my constituency of Stockport alone. That is a lot of people and a lot of anguish. The cases in my area included a 10-year-old boy, two 14-year-olds and one 15-year-old.

Families of missing people can suffer severe emotional problems, as well as significant financial, legal and practical difficulties. At the moment, the police, the Missing Persons Bureau and Missing People work closely together, dovetailing effectively to protect runaways and the devastated families left behind. Yet, as it stands, the very core of the front-line missing persons services is under threat. We face the prospect that, with a single blow, the entire national investment into missing persons could be ended.

As I speak, the closure of the National Policing Improvement Agency places the existence of the Missing Persons Bureau, which is the only UK agency focused exclusively on missing people, under the threat of total closure. The bureau alone possesses the national records for unidentified bodies and helps the police with missing persons investigations up and down the country. It is the UK national and international point of contact for all missing persons and unidentified body cases.

Also, the charity Missing People—which works closely with the police and the bureau, providing a unique service supporting families—is facing the total withdrawal from 1 April of its core Government funding of £500,000, made up of £150,000 from the Department for Education for a runaway helpline and £350,000 from the NPIA. Such a withdrawal will inevitably place the charity, which already works incredibly hard to raise 75% of its funding, at risk.

I want to argue that, instead of removing the missing persons infrastructure, we must maintain investment and underpin it with new legislation which supports existing services and does much-needed filling in of gaps. Britain lags behind the United States, and other European nations, regarding legislation. We simply do not have legislation to protect missing children and adults. At present, if someone’s house is burgled they are automatically offered emotional, practical and legal support; however, if their child goes missing they may get nothing, although they are surely a victim.

To illustrate the scale of the problem and the damage that might be done if we remove the missing persons support provided by the bureau and Missing People, I want to outline the work they do in providing support to families. Each month, the bureau supports an average of 500 cases and conducts some 100 cross-matched searches, while receiving 800 records of missing people. At present, the remains of 940 people have still to be identified; yet that important cross-matching work might cease if non-crime-related services are cut. The vast majority of those bodies represent a devastated family waiting for closure and answers. The matching must continue, so that families no longer have to wait for years for news of their relatives, only to find that they were buried in an unmarked grave or were on the coroner’s slab all along.

Last year, the charity Missing People took 114,000 desperate calls for help. In the past six months alone it has produced 275 of its iconic poster appeals to help bring some of those missing back home. In the same period it provided emotional support for more than 900 families—a service unique to Missing People. It was able to give some of those families the answers they were so desperate for, and to help close almost 340 missing persons cases. Sadly, nearly 1,000 cases are still open. It also provides ground-breaking research. The latest research, to be published shortly, highlights a frightening link between younger men being reported missing after a night out and their bodies later being found in water. We must ensure that young men are educated about that link, so that further deaths can be avoided.

The charity works with the police to provide valuable help in linking unidentified bodies to missing people. Fred and Rosemary West were convicted for killing at least 10 women and children. While the police worked tirelessly to identify the victims, at least half had not been reported missing. Only through the vital help of the then National Missing Persons Helpline—now called Missing People—were three of those anonymous victims finally indentified and their families able to lay them to rest. That is a further striking example of the fundamental importance of joint working between statutory and voluntary agencies.

We have come a long way since the West murders: there has been the 2005 Association of Chief Police Officers guidance on missing persons investigations, to help standardise best practice; the development of better computer systems in most constabularies across the country; and an increase in public awareness of the services provided by the charity Missing People. Despite that great progress, much work still needs to be done. By removing the missing persons infrastructure that our public and voluntary sectors have worked so hard to build up, we would not only deprive those whom it serves but also send a signal to perpetrators of evil crimes that we will not stand up to protect the most vulnerable.

The Government should take a number of steps: first, the vital one of developing a national missing persons database. I understand that a computer system already exists that could do the job, and that is inexpensive and in use by 24 police forces. If there was one system, one log of missing children and adult cases, and one location for the facts and faces of the missing, data-sharing would not be a problem or require expensive solutions.

There should be procedures for recording information and sharing it between the police, children’s services, care homes, Ofsted and the voluntary sector. The information could be used to analyse patterns of running away from home or local authority care. I would also like to see the police working with local authorities to ensure that preventive and intensive support services are available in every area of the country to young people who run away. Currently, only 10% of local authorities have access to young-runaway services. There are only two emergency beds in the whole of the UK, and one in three police forces reports that young people have to stay overnight in police cells because there is no emergency accommodation. The work is currently carried out through local authority data collection for national indicator 71, which is now unfortunately being scrapped.

We need fresh statutory legislation, so that local authorities record how many children and young people are missing in their locality, and to ensure that a return interview is carried out. The police must also have a key role in working with local safeguarding children’s boards to develop a set of multi-agency protocols and procedures for when a child goes missing.

I would also like the Government to consider a Green Paper on missing persons in order to protect missing adults and children. The first steps were set out in work by the Home Office, initiated by the missing persons taskforce, which I hope the Minister can confirm will continue. This need not be an added expense; indeed, in the spirit of the big society, we could use the Green Paper to explore using Missing People staff and volunteers further to support police and families. The charity believes that there is enormous potential to increase the role of individuals and organisations in the local community in resolving cases, safeguarding missing people, preventing disappearances and supporting families. Indeed, Missing People has already made substantial progress in creating networks of organisations to resolve cases more expeditiously, improving outcomes for missing people and their families and delivering cost savings at a local level.

We should require the Missing Persons Bureau to match every single body against every outstanding missing persons case. We should examine legislative opportunities to introduce a requirement in law—this happens for victims of crime—to ensure that every missing person’s family is signposted to Missing People’s free emotional, practical and legal support. We must use legislation to catch up with our colleagues in the devolved Administrations, who have already legislated for the presumption of death. In England and Wales, we have no guidance in cases where a missing person is presumed dead.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My wife was a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross and saw slavers moving people in chains or ropes across south Sudan towards the Arabian peninsula. Does Missing People have any evidence that any of our children are being shipped abroad to become slaves?

[Ann Coffey]

I am not sure about that, but I think that Missing People will respond directly to the hon. Gentleman on that very good point. The events we are debating do not happen simply within national boundaries, but go further.

We should make it a duty for a coroner to co-operate with police inquiries into missing people and to provide DNA evidence. Coroners are currently not required to co-operate with missing persons investigations and in some cases fail to provide information that could lead to a body’s being matched with an outstanding missing persons inquiry. I would also like the updated ACPO guidance on the investigation, management and recording of missing persons incidents to be published.

Our banks and insurance companies should have codes of practice to safeguard the families of missing people, who face the prospect of legal battles to safeguard their relative’s estate and, for example, to continue paying a mortgage on a property owned by the missing person.

It is vital that the Government protect the budget for missing persons. Ministers announced a 7% cut to local authority budgets, including a 50% reduction in funding for services for children in care by 2012. Police funding will also be cut. There are few services to support young people who run away, and there is no statutory obligation on, or centralised funding for, local authorities to provide services. Nationally, projects were experiencing reduced funding even before the latest spending cuts.

For the families of the disappeared, every day is a painful place of hope and despair, as they hope for news, but worry that not everything is being done to find their loves ones. We must send them the signal that they will not be forgotten.