Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We need to make sure that young people and children are being protected. These are vile crimes against children. Across the country we have seen young girls, teenagers and young boys who have been exploited by perpetrators in the most cruel and horrendous way. We have seen abuse by Pakistani-heritage gangs, we have seen paedophile gangs operating online, we have seen abuse in communities and institutions and family homes, and all those crimes are truly horrendous.

After the Rotherham inquiry in 2014, when we saw appalling abuse by, in that case, a Pakistani-heritage gang, I called for a duty to report. I called for the law to be changed to place a responsibility on public servants to report child abuse, and to make it an offence to cover it up. The Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a part for many years failed to bring in that duty to report, and we have lost a decade. We have to change the law. We have to make sure that we go after abuse without fear or favour, wherever it is found, in order to secure justice and protection for victims, and that dangerous perpetrators end up behind bars.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I associate myself with the Home Secretary’s remarks condemning those who perpetrate these horrific crimes. I stand with all victims of child sexual exploitation and sexual violence. As the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) knows, there was an independent review of child sexual exploitation in Bradford, which reported in 2021. A cross-party committee there has overseen the local changes, and I commend the actions of West Yorkshire police in locking up more than 20 perpetrators since 2021. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the failure of the previous Government to take action on the Jay report is a disgrace? What further actions by police and local authorities are needed to tackle these pernicious crimes?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend has rightly referred to the work done by West Yorkshire police not only to look at public protection currently but to pursue historic investigations, which continue to be important because people often feel unable to come forward and tell their story about the abuse that has taken place until many years later. When survivors are brave enough to come forward, it is incredibly important for their stories to be investigated fully, and for operations like those run by West Yorkshire police into historic abuse to continue. We owe it to victims and survivors to make sure that change happens in practice, and that includes changing the law as part of the policing and crime Bill.