Barry Sheerman
Main Page: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)Department Debates - View all Barry Sheerman's debates with the Home Office
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs May
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is considering the lessons that may need to be learned across the board for local authorities as a result of this report. Of course my hon. Friend makes a valid point. What matters is that those who are elected representatives ask the right questions and are prepared to pursue their concerns and not simply to allow them to be allayed in unsatisfactory ways. We all have a responsibility for encouraging those who are councillors or elected representatives—Members of Parliament as well—to ask the questions and to push, so that when we are concerned about failure to take action, we highlight that and make sure that something happens.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
May I say to the Home Secretary that it is very easy to respond in the wrong way when one of these crises arises? I hope that we will learn from some of the rather speedy reactions to the case of Baby Peter some years ago. I feel very guilty about the revelations in Rotherham. I was Chair of the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families—we had responsibilities across the board and not just in education—and early on in my chairmanship, we discovered in an inquiry into looked-after children that gangs up and down the country were systematically preying on young girls in care. We knew about that and we did not do enough about it. Members of this House—many of us—knew what was going on. I had a debate in Westminster Hall in January 2009 on child prostitution and the gangs up and down the country who were taking girls away and trafficking them across the country. A lot of us knew, but we did not work hard enough. Ann Cryer did. A group of us did something about runaway children and the fact that the police, social services and children’s services were not joined up enough.
Let me say one last thing. It is easy to blame particular services. I do not think political correctness was the only issue. Of course, it played a part, but when I went and visited police officers, I often heard that this was too difficult; the girls would not give evidence, and if police needed to track and to have sophisticated operations, it was too expensive. Please, let us hesitate and listen to people such as Professor Eileen Munro. Let us get the right answers, not the wrong ones.
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman’s point about ensuring that we do not have a knee-jerk reaction and that anything that is put in place will genuinely deal with the problems that we have identified is valid. His other point about the coming together and working together of different services and agencies, and the fact that very often people slip between nets of different agencies, is also very valid. That is why the multi-agency safeguarding hubs are so important. All the evidence shows that if we bring agencies together, we get a much better result than if they just act independently.