Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report
Debate between Esther McVey and Yvette Cooper(2 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right that so many victims and survivors do not come forward. We need to make it easier for people to do so, and recognise the scale of abuse. I agree with her on the really important issue about county lines and the interaction between criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation. Too often, the county lines and criminal exploitation is seen as an issue involving teenage boys, but very often teenage girls are also drawn in—and very often, that also means sexual exploitation. I do not believe that enough investigation has yet been done into that particular pattern and form of child sexual abuse and exploitation. As we strengthen the law on the criminal exploitation of children, we need to ensure that this issue is properly pursued, as she says, as part of the data gathering and through further research.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
This Government have been dragged kicking and screaming to deliver a national inquiry, having dismissed the pleas of the nation as jumping on a far-right bandwagon. That reluctance is why my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) will continue his inquiry and why I will be supporting him it. Will the Government’s inquiry investigate the political motivations behind the cover-ups, including the role of the Labour party, or will that continue to be swept under the carpet?
Yvette Cooper
Everyone should want not just to get to the truth about past failures, but to ensure we make the changes to protect children for the future. That includes changes in social services; changes in policing and the police operation, which I hope the right hon. Lady would welcome, to take action to put perpetrators behind bars; and action to gather proper ethnicity data, which simply has not been gathered properly before. Louise Casey’s report is very clear: the data gathering that the right hon. Lady’s Government left behind is totally inadequate. I hope she will agree to all those factors being extremely important, so that we can get stronger protection, and truth, for victims.
Immigration System
Debate between Esther McVey and Yvette Cooper(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. I think the previous Government had eight Home Secretaries in the space of eight years, and two of them were the same person.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Without a third country such as Rwanda, can the Home Secretary tell the House where illegal immigrants whose country of origin cannot be established, because they have destroyed their documentation, will be deported to? Is it the case that they cannot be deported, and anyone who exploits that loophole can stay here with impunity?
Yvette Cooper
This Government have increased returns since the election; there have been 24,000 returns since the election. That includes an increase of more than 20% in failed asylum cases. It also includes action we are taking to deal with people who claim to have lost their papers and to ensure that we can deliver those returns. We will continue to support other policies, including working with the EU on issues around returns hubs. The Conservatives had two years to run their Rwanda scheme. They spent £700 million and sent four volunteers. That was a waste of money, a failure for the taxpayer and a failed delivery.