Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Final Report

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for calling out what has happened in Lambeth and elsewhere; I have nothing to add to her words where that is concerned. A number of hon. Members have raised issues concerning unaccompanied children, particularly those seeking asylum. The accommodation care means that they should be moved within 15 days, but I think that needs to be done quicker, if at all possible. We have also set up a programme of paying local authorities, increasing placement offers to councils by £6,000 to accommodate every child. She asks about cross-Government work—I should possibly add cross-party work—and that is under way, led by my the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies). I will be taking a personal interest in the matter all the way through and convening meetings with other Secretaries of State to tackle the problem from every possible angle.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

In the 20 years that I led on child protection work in local government, we saw repeated attempts to restructure the systems in place for child protection. However, a common thread that seemed to run through every example of failure was a lack of really good information-sharing. Even today, while councils are the lead agencies on child protection, they are reliant on other organisations—the police, the NHS, especially schools and sometimes, in the case of asylum-seeking children, Border Force—to bring evidence to their attention so that early intervention can take place. Will my right hon. Friend give some consideration to making some of those safeguarding partners statutory partners in the safeguarding process, so that they can be held accountable for their actions in the same way that local authorities, police and the national health service are?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This morning, I was at Hertfordshire Constabulary, looking at the impressive database it has for when people are booked into custody cells. I was surprised to learn on questioning, however, that if somebody had been brought in because they were suspected of abusing somebody, including a child, that data is not necessarily or automatically shared by all 43 forces across the country. That is just within the police, let alone the crossover he mentions with other statutory bodies, local authorities, care organisations and others. The big thing that strikes me in my first few days in this job is that working together with those statutory partners to bring the information together, so that it can be flagged up as and where necessary, must be an important part of the solution. We live in the 21st century and that should be possible to do. I take his comments on board and promise that I will be spending a considerable amount of time looking at how we can improve the situation.