Child Sexual Exploitation

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point. Although we must indentify where there have been failings in the system and root out systems that are not working, it is important that we do not vilify places that take action and bring perpetrators to justice. If we do that, we will put off local authorities and police from taking these cases to court.

Government can only do so much. It is generally accepted that local services, led by the local safeguarding children boards and police, have to lead on responding to child sexual exploitation. But before they can do that, they are going to have to accept that this issue affects them and is worthy of being prioritised in the current economic climate. There are still local authorities that do not think this affects their area. I do not cast any stones. I cannot express the shock I had when the news about the Oxford case emerged, and I do not think I was alone. Organised sexual exploitation on this scale was, to me, something that happened somewhere else—in inner cities with gangs or in cities with grinding poverty. What is more, to me, it did not happen to local girls; it happened to trafficked girls from Cambodia, eastern Europe or west Africa—or just any other place. What I have learned during this process is that it is not so much that it is everywhere, as that it could happen anywhere. The deputy Children’s Commissioner, who is halfway through a two-year inquiry into group and gang-associated child sexual exploitation, said in evidence to the Select Committee:

“what I am uncovering is that the sexual exploitation of children is happening all over the country. As one police officer who was a lead in a very big investigation in a very lovely, leafy, rural part of the country said to me, there is not a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited.”

Peter Davies, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre confirmed her view, although I have to say that he thought that hamlets might be pushing it.

In that context, it is not enough to have plans, regulations and guidance pushed down from government—we had that in 2009 and it did not work. What we need to know is that effective multi-agency teams are on the ground, trained to recognise risk factors and able to pursue not only prevention and early intervention, but investigation and prosecution. This is what the Government have been trying to encourage since last year, but it turns out that it is quite hard to track local progress on the ground.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that one way in which the Government might be able to fulfil their role in this process is by putting a reporting requirement on local safeguarding children boards so that this evidence is collated nationally, not just locally?

[Nicola Blackwood]

It is as though the hon. Gentleman has read my mind; I will be coming to that point later.

When CEOP undertook its “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” report 18 months ago, it received only 13 responses from local authorities—that is out of 154 councils in England. The report was clear: local safeguarding children boards were not fulfilling their statutory responsibilities; they needed to improve their ability to recognise the risks in this area so that they could intervene early; and multi-agency working, particularly through co-located units, was the key to ensuring that data and soft intelligence did not fall between the cracks and did not succumb to overly cautious data protection practices, especially in the NHS and in social services.

The most recent survey of local authority activity that I could find comes not from any official statistic, but from unpublished research by Barnardo’s. In an August 2012 review of its “Cut them free” campaign, it found that although 107 out of 154 local authorities had signed up to tackle child sexual exploitation, few of the 31 local authorities that responded in detail had detailed, well developed strategies. Most local authorities were still planning strategies, data collection, training and specialist service provision, although most were planning to have them in place by the end of 2013. I honestly do not think that that shows a lack of will; it is an indication that this is a very recent strategy and that they are starting from a very low base.

However, it is almost impossible for us to assess the scale of the problem or the consistency of service provision without having a robust policy of data collation and collection. I do not think we can assess the risks, map the need or properly hold our local authorities to account. I would add a caveat: victims are often moved between cities, so if we are going to have any kind of data collection, it needs to be consistent between local authorities, because we do not want victims to fall through the cracks when they go from one local authority to another.

We have already seen data sharing causing too many barriers. One key problem regularly raised with me is the failure of professionals to share data about victims that could have given a full picture of what was happening. I understand, up to a point, that discerning such insidious underlying abuse beneath a bad girl image might have been a leap too far, given superficial behaviour, but what I still find difficult is that a big source of confusion lay in the fact that obvious indicators in data about victims, such as repeated missing episodes, unexplained injuries, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, petty offences and truancy were not shared between agencies. That meant that no one even had a chance to put the picture together and discern a pattern of abuse, free from judgment about whether some 14-year-old was simply making bad choices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Browne]

These are rather procedural points, and I want to get back to the substance, but I will answer both of them. On the former, I was advised that in debates such as this, the Minister may speak either at the beginning, the end or somewhere in between—and there are merits and demerits in all those possibilities. It struck me as reasonable to speak at this stage of the debate, although I understand my hon. Friend’s point. As for his latter point, this issue touches on many different aspects of Government responsibility. There is, for instance, a large Home Office responsibility, and because the Home Secretary had already spoken in the House about topical child sexual exploitation cases, it was thought appropriate throughout Government for a Home Office Minister to reply. However, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), and Ministers in other Departments—including, obviously, the Department of Health—take a keen interest in the matter as well.

[Gavin Shuker]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Browne]

I want to speak about the substance of the issue rather than the architecture of Government. I will give way now, but perhaps Members will then allow me to deliver a substantial part of my speech uninterrupted.

[Gavin Shuker]

I do not mean to make any partisan point, but I thought that it might be helpful if the Minister outlined exactly where the responsibilities lie, and with which Ministers. I have a particular question to ask about the strategy relating to violence against women and girls.

[Mr Browne]

The lead Minister is my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich. As I said in response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), many aspects of this appalling criminal activity rest—in terms of governmental responsibility—with the Home Office, because a crime has been committed, and the Home Office obviously takes a keen and leading interest in criminal matters. However, other Departments, including the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department of Health, consider it on a cross-Government basis.

Part of the reason for today’s debate is the fact that a number of recent developments and concerns about child abuse have led to a wide and, some would say, confusing range of inquiries and investigations, and it may be helpful if I update the House briefly on where we stand. Before I do so, however, I think that I should respond to a number of Members who have raised the issue of a single judge-led inquiry into the issues of child abuse that have emerged over recent weeks.

As the Prime Minister made clear last week, the Government do not rule out the taking of further steps. We want to be absolutely on top of the problem of child sexual abuse. We do not want anything to be covered up or any information to be held back, and if there are more things that we have to do, we will do them. We must, however, let the police and others get on with the job of establishing the facts and, of course—in the case of the police investigations—establishing whether any criminal charges need to be pursued. We do not want any further inquiries or investigations to get in the way of that vital and immediate work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I was saying that it is important to recognise the methodology involved. In the cases mentioned by the hon. Member for Keighley, on the face of it the victims were white and the perpetrators were Muslims, but that is coincidental and not deliberate.

[Gavin Shuker]

My hon. Friend is being extremely generous as she receives no injury time for this intervention. Is the point she advocates so strongly that these samples become self-selecting after a period, and that the evidence base is not advanced enough for us to draw conclusions about race and ethnicity? Understandably, however, certain newspapers will go after certain cases.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I think the hon. Lady has got the message and the hon. Gentleman will understand if he now gets moved down the list. He does want to speak but he has intervened a couple of times already.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. I commend the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) for securing the debate and all Members who have participated in an extremely measured and well-informed debate for showing this House’s many good attributes when we approach serious subjects together. It is right that we focus on various aspects of child sexual exploitation, but I want to start with a disclaimer. All these experiences are anecdotal and based on our own angles on child sexual exploitation, but we must not forget that exploitation is prevalent in as many different types of communities as there are different types of communities in the first place.

I will talk a little about the relationship between child sexual exploitation and prostitution. It is easy, by way of shorthand, to talk about the abuse of women by men, but I appreciate that abuse can happen across different genders and ages. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) eloquently made the point that one of the most egregious failures in the Rochdale case was the casual way in which various adults who had responsibility discounted victims’ claims or did not take them with the seriousness they should have done. They referred to life choices and prostitution when talking about the behaviour of the young girls being abused.

There is indisputably a relationship between child sexual exploitation and prostitution, between the systematic exploitation of children by adults and the systematic abuse, largely of women and largely by men, through the purchase of sex. The Home Office’s 2004 consultation paper, “Paying the price”, said that around 50% of men and women in prostitution entered prostitution before they were 18. Some studies put the figures closer to 75%. In my experience, as chair of the all-party group on prostitution and the global sex trade, I have met organisations that are helping women to exit prostitution, and they put the figure at between 70% and 90%. Whatever figures we choose to use, it is clear that a real problem is the crossover between child sexual exploitation and the perpetuation of prostitution on the streets and behind doors in Britain. Barnardo’s has gathered significant evidence showing that children’s homes are regularly targeted by those trying to coerce young people into prostitution and that 70% of people in prostitution have spent some time in care.

Let us be clear, because the law is. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 clarified that it is an offence to pay for the sexual services of a child under 18. The maximum penalty, depending on the child’s age, could be 14 years imprisonment or life imprisonment. The law is incredibly clear and strong on that. When prostitution is talked about in relation to a child—the guidance on the language to be used has changed, quite rightly, in recent years—it is not the child who is at fault, but the perpetuator of the violence or the pimp who controls the young person. As 50% of people in prostitution are likely to have been abused or to have entered prostitution before the age of 18, it is highly likely that in each of our constituencies tonight, or over the course of today, people under the age of 18 are being abused in that way.

I want to ask three basic questions about why we rarely focus on prostitution in debates on child sexual exploitation. The first question relates to political leadership, and I am not making a party political point. I know from the work the all-party group has done on the implementation of section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009, which relates to sex with a coerced person, that, even though the law is quite clear, the agencies will struggle to implement it because they feel that there is not clear political leadership or direction on how to do so. If we look at the evidence that has been gathered since that offence was introduced, largely in relation to trafficked women, which is the clearest place where a prosecution could be brought, we see that the penalties that have been imposed have been minor, including cautions. This sends completely the wrong signals about how serious the offence is. If one talks to the Crown Prosecution Service, to the Association of Chief Police Officers or to chief constables, they will say, “If we have a clear political steer to go after an issue we will put the resources in, but we are incredibly stretched and for that reason we put our officers elsewhere.” There is a clear case for political leadership on this issue.

Secondly, there is the fact that so-called problematic behaviour is used as shorthand to get to a position whereby various workers in our social services and other places end up focusing on the behaviour of the child and not the behaviour of the adults around them. In the Rochdale case, there was an escalating cycle of sexual violence that started with alcohol and drugs but ended up with money being swapped for sex as people were pimped out. That needs to be challenged as well.

The third issue, which might be of most importance to us in this House in the coming years, is the mixed messages that are sent out on the legal settlement around prostitution. It would be possible for me today to walk out of this Chamber and to purchase sex and in doing so never once commit a crime, but I could be purchasing sex from someone who is extremely vulnerable and obviously comes from a background where they have had little choice about the route they have taken. Is that appropriate when many countries around the world such as Sweden and, even closer to home, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly are looking at changes in the legal settlement around prostitution?

Child sexual exploitation requires us to have a challenging mindset that says that it is not about the supply of children but the demand of adults. I believe very strongly that in our broader society we must challenge the demand of people who want to abuse and take from others. The argument against this, of course, is choice, but I simply ask this question: with 50% of those people working on our streets tonight likely to have been sexually abused as a child and to have entered prostitution at an age below one where they could consent, what choice do they have, especially with the many complex issues surrounding the situation? If today’s debate forces us to ask whether we take this issue seriously enough to resource it sufficiently to tackle child sexual exploitation for money, and to ask the deeper questions about how we handle sex in our society, it will have been a good thing.