Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham) Debate

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Department: Home Office

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Clive Betts Excerpts
Tuesday 2nd September 2014

(10 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Baroness May of Maidenhead Portrait Mrs May
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I have had a preliminary discussion with the First Minister about the abuse that has taken place over a number of years in Northern Ireland and I will be looking further into the relationship between the inquiry that we are setting up and the work that has already been started and done in various ways in Northern Ireland on these issues. Looking into that is on my agenda.

Clive Betts Portrait Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
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The Home Secretary may be interested to know that the chief executive and the executive director of children’s services in Rotherham are coming before the Communities and Local Government Committee next week. It is right that officers as well as politicians in Rotherham are held accountable for what happened.

Professor Jay specifically mentioned in her report several independent investigations and inspections of Rotherham children’s services over the years, a number of which were carried out by Ofsted. Virtually all of them offered general reassurance about what was happening in children’s services, and prior to 2009 talked about improvements. How can we be certain that Ofsted has the skills and abilities to conduct a much better inspection next time?

Baroness May of Maidenhead Portrait Mrs May
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The Secretary of State for Education is looking at the whole question of making sure that inspections at local authority level are aware of the issues that they need to be looking at and deal with those issues properly.