Child Protection

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his questions, and I know he has great expertise and interest in this area. With this early intervention we are not just setting strategies but implementing work across the country through the targeted funds we have set up, including the youth endowment fund, which is deliberately designed to take place over a 10-year period so that the investment rolls through various spending reviews. It has been protected so that we can invest to learn and discover which projects work and which do not. It is fair to say that there have previously been misunderstandings about what works, and we want to learn more so that local authorities and other commissioners invest wisely.

I take my hon. Friend’s point and thank him for his information about an earlier iteration of the child sexual abuse strategy. We are looking across all the typologies of child sexual abuse. There are many typologies, particularly nowadays, sadly, with the prevalence of online abuse and exploitation, which I am afraid can take place with just an ordinary mobile phone and can have devastating consequences for the child who is targeted, not just in the immediate circumstances of the photo or video being taken but, of course, for many years thereafter, as we are discovering through our work with WePROTECT.

I am very conscious of my hon. Friend’s observations, and I am happy to meet him to discuss them further, because we want to get this right.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Minister has referred to the stronger multi-agency child safeguarding arrangements that were introduced in September 2019. She says it is recognised that they are a key opportunity to deliver the kind of systemic change we need to see.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) has said that police forces are not active enough. As a constituency Member of Parliament, I am concerned about children’s services in Hull. Humberside police is responsible for ensuring the safeguarding of children in Hull, so what should I ask its chief officers to deliver to make sure children are kept safe?

[Victoria Atkins]

The police and crime commissioner obviously sets the priorities for the force, so I would go to them before going to the chief constable. Police and crime commissioners play a vital role in commissioning local services, and we have seen some excellent commissioning decisions in relation to exploitation more widely than simply sexual exploitation and, of course, in their work to hold the police to account on this issue.

The hon. Lady should ask the chief constable whether he or she has confidence that the force is working in accordance with the vulnerability knowledge and practice programme that we have funded to enable policing best practice to develop in response to vulnerability. Vulnerability is key to many of the crime types we see nowadays, and it should be at the front of every chief constable’s mind.